In this paper, we ask whether a small structural model with sticky prices and wages, embedding various modeling devices designed to increase the degree of strategic complementarity between price-setters, can fit postwar US data. To answer this question, we resort to a two-step empirical...

We examine the effects of introducing investment adjustment costs, variable capital utilization, indivisible labor, and material goods into a sticky price model subject to a cash-in-advance constraint. Combining these elements, the model overcomes the main criticisms traditionally addressed to...

In this paper, we, seek to characterize the dynamic effects of permanent technology shocks and the way in which US monetary authorities reacted to these shocks over the sample 1955(1)--2002(4). To do so, we develop an augmented sticky price-sticky wage model of the business cycle, which is...

In this paper, we seek to characterize the dynamic effects of permanent technology shocks and the way in which European monetary authorities reacted to these shocks over the past two decades. To do so, we develop an augmented sticky price-sticky wage model of the business cycle, which is...

In this paper, using US as well as French sectoral data and indicators of price rigidity, we re-examine the (lack of) relation between price stickiness and inflation persistence. This has recently been put forward by Bils and Klenow (2004) as evidence against time-dependent price setting models....

I provide a microfounded theory for one of the oldest, but so far informal, explanations of price rigidity: the kinked demand curve theory. Assuming that some customers observe at no cost only the price of the store they happen to be at gives rise to a kink in firms' demand curves: a price...

We highlight different stylized facts concerning wage stickiness. First, in France, the typical duration of a wage agreement is one year. Consequently, a Taylor-type (1980) model appears to reproduce appropriately the distribution of agreement durations. Some 30 percent of settlements stipulate...

Based upon a large fraction of the price records used for computing the French CPI, we document consumer price rigidity in France. We first provide a methodological discussion of issues involved in estimating average price duration with micro-data. The average duration of prices in the sectors...

This paper reports the results of a survey conducted by the Banque de France during winter 2003-2004 to investigate the price-setting behavior of French manufacturing companies. Prices are found to adjust infrequently; the median firm modifies its price only once a year. Price reviews are more...

This paper examines heterogeneity in price stickiness using a large, original, set of individual price data collected at the retail level for the computation of the French CPI. To that end, we estimate, at a very high level of disaggregation, competing-risks duration models that distinguish...