The aim of this article is to show that RBC models can account for the so-called Phillips curve. We propose an efficiency wage model in which money is introduced via a cash-in-advance constraint. Households choose how much effort to devote by comparing present real and nominal wages with past...

This paper addresses the issue of why Keynesian economists have had such a hard time in giving the concept of involuntary unemployment a place in economic theory. Is the gradual demise of this concept a manifestation of some inner defect in economic theory or is it due to some intrinsic weakness...

The aim of this paper is to disentangle four main acceptations of the unvoluntary unemployment concept, to be found in the literature. The will be dubbed respectively as unvoluntary unemployment à la Keynes, à la Modigliani, à la Azariadis and à la Haavelmo (or, alternatively, Keynes-,...

Using a retrospective methodology, my paper examines critically the insights on involuntary unemployment offered by Keynes in his General Theory. Keynes, it is argued, gave involuntary unemployment a modern micro-founded definition yet –quite opportunely, in view of the difficulty of the...

This paper builds a macroeconomic model of equilibrium unemployment in which firms persistently face difficulties in selling their production and this affects their decisions to create jobs. Due to search-frictins on the product market, equilibrium unemployment is a U-shaped function of the...

This paper reexamines the existence of a long-run relationship between wages and unemployment in the U.K., with data over the period 1860-1913 used by A.W. Phillips to derive the well-known Phillips Curve. Using Johansen's maximum likelihood method of testing for cointegration, a long-run...

Hall [1978] showed that the life cycle consumption hypothesis implies a first order autoregressive process for the marginal utility of consumption. This paper extends his results by showing that an appropriate pattern of rational habits will lead to an arbitrary autoregressive integrated moving...

Durant les années 1930, Hicks cherche à comprendre la crise à laquelle l’économie mondiale est confrontée. Mais à la différence de la plupart des économistes de l’époque, il tente de se représenter théoriquement la situation dans un cadre d’équilibre général walrassien. Le...

Present-day macroeconomics has sometimes been dubbed ‘the new neoclassical synthesis’, suggesting that it constitutes a reincarnation of the neoclassical synthesis of the 1950s. This paper assesses this understanding. To this end, we examine the contents of the ‘old’ and the ‘new’...

Is the Great Depression amenable to real business cycle theory ? In the 1970s and 1980s Lucas and Prescott took an abstentionist stance. They admitted that, because of its exceptional character, an explanation of the Great Depression was beyond the grasp of the equilibrium approach to the...