We consider an agent-based model of emotional contagion coupled with motion in one dimension that has recently been studied in the computer science community. The model involves movement with a speed proportional to a “fear” variable that undergoes a temporal consensus averaging based on distance to other agents. We study the effect of Riemann initial data for this problem, leading to shock dyn...

Survey data on expectations shows that households have heterogeneous inflation expectations and their inflation expectations respond sluggishly to realized shocks to future inflation. By contrast, in models with a zero bound on the nominal interest rate currently used for monetary and fiscal policy analysis, households’ inflation expectations are not heterogeneous and not sticky. This paper sol...

Survey data on expectations shows that households have heterogeneous inflation expectations and households’ inflation expectations respond sluggishly to realized shocks to future inflation. By contrast, in models with a zero lower bound currently used for monetary and fiscal policy analysis, households’ inflation expectations are neither heterogeneous nor sticky. This paper therefore solves a N...

This paper uses a multisector sticky price model with cash-in-advance constraint to examine the implications of sectoral nominal price rigidities for the cyclical behavior of sectoral and aggregate movements in prices and output. The data suggest that correlations between sectoral output and price changes are substantially lower than would be implied by a flexible price model with sectoral tech...

This paper develops a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model with sticky prices where agents have imperfect information on the stance and direction of monetary policy. Agents respond by using Kalman filtering to unravel persistent and temporary monetary policy changes in order to form optimal forecasts of future policy actions. Our results show that a sticky price model with imperf...

The main substantive finding of the recent structural vector autoregression literature with a differenced specification of hours (DSVAR) is that technology shocks lead to a fall in hours. Researchers have used these results to argue that standard business cycle models in which technology shocks leads to a rise in hours should be discarded. We evaluate the DSVAR approach by asking the following:...

To what degree can the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the East Asian crisis be accounted for within a dynamic general equilibrium model? This paper investigates that question using a framework in which the crisis itself is modeled as an exogenous shock to the country risk premium. This exercise has empirical discipline because the scale of the shock can be measured by the movement in t...

Changes in monetary policy are typically implemented gradually, an empirical observation known as interest-rate smoothing. We propose the explanation that timenon-separable preferences may render interest-rate smoothing optimal. We find that when consumers have “catching-up-with-the-Joneses” preferences, optimal monetary policy reacts gradually to shocks to prevent inefficiently fast adjustment...

A commonly held view is that nominal rigidities are important for the transmission of monetary policy shocks. We argue that they are also important for understanding the dynamic effects of technology shocks, especially on labor hours, wages, and prices. Based on a dynamic general equilibrium framework, our closed-form solutions reveal that a pure sticky-price model predicts correctly that hours...

Sticky demand – sticky nominal spending – acts as a substitute for sticky prices. In an inventorytheoretic model of the demand for money, monetary injections are offset by endogenous movements in velocity that keep nominal spending flat. When embedded in a sticky price model, this reduces the model’s reliance on implausibly large amounts of exogenous stickiness. For example: 6 months asset mark...