This paper studies optimal monetary policy in a model where inflation is persistent. Two types of price setters are assumed to exist. One acts rationally given Calvo-type constraints on price setting. The other type sets prices according to a rule-of-thumb. This results in a Phillips curve with both a forward-looking term and a backward-looking term. The Phillips curve nests a standard purely f...

We establish that the Phillips curve is persistence-dependent: inflation responds differently to persistent versus moderately (or transient) fluctuations in unemployment rate gap. This persistence-dependent relationship appears align with business-cycle stages and thus consistent existing theory. Previous work fails model this dependence, thereby finding numerous "inflation puzzles" – e.g., mis...

We use a Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm jointly to estimate the parameters of a ‘true’ data generating mechanism and those of a sequence of approximating models that a monetary authority uses to guide its decisions. Gaps between a true expectational Phillips curve and the monetary authority’s approximating non-expectational Phillips curve models unleash inflation that a monetary au...

Blanchflower and Oswald (1994) have argued that, in regional data, the level of unemployment is related to the fevel of wages. This result is at variance with an application of the original Phillips curve to regional data, which would predict that the change in wages ought to be related to the unemployment rate. On the other hand, there is considerable empirical support for the expectations-aug...

A number of authors have suggested that economies face a long-run inflation-unemployment trade-off due to downward nominal-wage rigidity. This theory has implications for the nature of the short-run Phillips curve when wage inflation is low. Akerlof, Dickens and Perry have developed an empirical model in which a variable (S) designed to capture the effect of downward nominal-wage rigidity is co...

A number of authors have suggested that economies face a long-run inflation-unemployment trade-off due to downward nominal-wage rigidity. This theory has implications for the nature of the short-run Phillips curve when wage inflation is low. Akerlof, Dickens and Perry have developed an empirical model in which a variable (S) designed to capture the effect of downward nominal-wage rigidity is co...

Modern theories of inflation incorporate a vertical long-run Phillips curve and are usually estimated using techniques that ignore the non-stationary behaviour of inflation. Consequently, the estimates obtained are imprecise and are unable to distinguish between competing models of inflation and test the veracity of a vertical long-run Phillips curve. We estimate a Phillips curve model taking i...

In this paper we explore the influence of inflation rigidity on the monetary policy transmission mechanism in a model featuring the hybrid Phillips curve. We compare the New Keynesian Phillips curve and the hybrid Phillips curve for their contribution to reproducing stylized empirical facts about business cycles driven by monetary policy shocks. Variables’ induced volatility and the dynamics of...