This paper argues that the cross-sectional approach to durations is essential to understand nominal rigidity because this captures the fact that price-spells are generated by firms' price-setting behavior. Since the distribution of durations is dominated by a proliferation of short contracts,...

The Generalized Calvo and the Generalized Taylor model of price and wage-setting are, unlike the standard Calvo and Taylor counterparts, exactly consistent with the distribution of durations observed in the data. Using price and wage micro-data from a major euro-area economy (France), we develop...