We use survey data to investigate how urban households in Ethiopia coped with the food price shock in 2008 and idiosyncratic shocks. Qualitative data indicate that the high food price inflation was by far the most adverse economic shock between 2004 and 2008, and that a significant proportion of households had to adjust food consumption in response. Regression results indicate that households w...

I n January 1999, eleven European countries abandoned their respective national currencies and monetary independence to adopt a common currency, the Euro.1 This event, in which several industrialized countries formed a currency union, stands out in modern monetary history by its uniqueness, and in due time, it will allow for a better understanding of the implications of different monetary arran...

The data in Fehr and Tyran (2001) and Petersen and Winn (2014) show that money illusion plays an important role in nominal price adjustment after a fully anticipated negative monetary shock. Money illusion affects subjects’ expectations, and causes pronounced nominal inertia after a negative shock but much less inertia after a positive shock. Thus Petersen and Winn (2014) provide a misleading i...

I study the effects of a lack of common knowledge on nominal adjustment in a dynamic price-setting game with incomplete information. In particular, I show how the speed of price adjustments following a nominal or real shock depends on the information structure among pricesetters. The provision of public information leads to a reduction of higher-order uncertainty, and hence to more rapid price ...

Output responses to oil-price shocks not only tend to be weaker, but also to peak earlier recently. This paper builds a model that incorporates a realistic structure of US petroleum consumption and explores three possible explanations for the changes. The first is based on deregulation in the transportation sector, which has brought more competition and improved efficiency in the industry. The ...

We revisit the discussion about the relationship between price’s cyclical features, implicit collusion and the demand level in an oligopoly supergame where a positive shock may hit demand and disrupt collusion. The novel feature of our model consists in characterising the post-shock noncooperative price and comparing it against the cartel price played in the last period of the collusive path, t...

We determine empirically how the Big Three automakers accommodate shocks to demand. They have the capability to change prices, alter labor inputs through temporary layoffs and overtime, or adjust inventories. These adjustments are interrelated, non-convex, and dynamic in nature. Combining weekly plant-level data on production schedules and output with monthly data on sales and transaction price...