Optimal monetary policy maximizes the welfare of a representative agent, given frictions in the economic environment. Constructing a model with two broad sets of frictions — costly price adjustment by imperfectly competitive firms and costly exchange of wealth for goods — we find optimal...

State-dependent pricing (SDP) models treat the timing of price changes as a profit-maximizing choice, symmetrically with other decisions of firms. Using quantitative general equilibrium models that incorporate a “generalized (S,s) approach,” we investigate the implications of SDP for topics...

In a canonical staggered pricing model, monetary discretion leads to multiple private sector equilibria. The basis for multiplicity is a form of policy complementarity. Specifically, prices set in the current period embed expectations about future policy, and actual future policy responds to...

Optimal monetary policy maximizes welfare, given frictions in the economic environment. Constructing a model with two sets of frictions – the Keynesian friction of costly price adjustment by imperfectly competitive firms and the Monetarist friction of costly exchange of wealth for goods –...

Though built with increasingly precise microfoundations, modern optimizing sticky price models have displayed a chronic inability to generate large and persistent real responses to monetary shocks, as recently stressed by Chari, Kehoe, and McGrattan [2000]. This is an ironic finding, since...

In the last ten years there has been an explosion of empirical work examining price setting behavior at the micro level. The work has in turn challenged existing macro models that attempt to explain monetary nonneutrality, because these models are generally at odds with much of the micro price...