A flexible approach to direct inflation targeting is a viable monetary policy choice for transition economies that is believed to facilitate both the economic transition and the monetary convergence to the euro. Following this assumption, an analytical model investigating the link between the...

This study views inflation targeting as a viable regime for more advanced transition economies. A dynamic approach to the trajectory of disinflation and the flexibility of direct inflation targeting is presented in the context of achieving monetary convergence to the EU/EMU. The candidate...

This study examines the link between various monetary policy regimes and the ability to manage inflation and exchange rate risk premiums in the EU candidate countries as they undergo monetary convergence to the eurozone. The underlying hypothesis is that a system of 'flexible inflation...

We examine the response of a sticky-wage economy to various real and nominal shocks. In addition to variations in hours, we allow for an endogenous response in worker effort per hour. Despite wages being predetermined, the labor market clears through the effort margin. We find that the ability...

We examine the impact of wage stickiness when employment has an effort as well as hours dimension. Despite wages being predetermined, the labor market clears through the effort margin. Consequently, welfare costs of wage stickiness are potentially much, much smaller.

The cyclical behavior of hours worked, wages, and consumption does not conform with the prediction of the representative agent with standard preferences. The residual in the intra-temporal first-order condition for commodity consumption and leisure is often viewed as a failure of labor-market...

This paper suggests that skill accumulation through past work experience, or ``learning-by-doing'' (LBD), can provide an important propagation mechanism in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, as the current labor supply affects future productivity. Our econometric analysis uses a...

This paper investigates the relationship between bilateral FDI positions and cross-country business cycle correlations in the period 1982–2001. We find that countries that have comparatively intensive FDI relations also have more synchronized business cycles during 1995–2001. Before 1995, we...

Recently, Gali and others find that technological progress may be contractionary: a favorable technology shock reduces hours worked in the short run. We ask whether this observation is robust in disaggregate data. According to our VAR analysis of 458 four-digit U.S. manufacturing industries for...

We investigate the role of labor-supply shifts in economic fluctuations. A new VAR identification scheme for labor supply shocks is proposed. According to our VAR analysis of post-war U.S. data, labor-supply shifts account for about half the variation in hours and one-fifth of variation in...