Do business cycle fluctuations leave a role and a welfare case for an active stabilization policy by means of fiscal policy instruments? We address this issue in a two-sector open economy model with price-taking firms and imperfect competition in the labour market. Fiscal policies are shown to...

Empirical evidence documents substantial persistence in the adjustment process to nominal shocks. Existing open-economy models have failed either to generate interesting dynamics or found that the mechanisms are quantitatively weak. We consider the propagation of nominal shocks in a fully...

Persistent real effects of nominal shocks is considered in an intertemporal macromodel with capital accumulation and staggered nominal wage contracting. By placing the contracting process in a setting of imperfect competition it becomes possible to avoid the standard problem that intertemporal...

Nominal rigidities imply that monetary neutrality is broken, but can they also account for persistent effects of nominal shocks? One possible propagation mechanism may arise from the fact that nominal price and wage decisions are not coordinated in a decentralized economy, but made by numerous...

Standard models of imperfectly competitive labor market predict that real wages are unaffected by productivity. This is in conflict with empirical evidence. We integrate imperfectly competitive labor markets in a fully specified dynamic macromodel. While temporary shocks are consistent with the...

Empirical evidence documents substantial persistence in the adjustment process to nominal shocks. Existing open-economy models have failed either to generate interesting dynamics or found that the mechanisms are quantitatively weak. We consider the propagation of nominal shocks in a fully...

A dominant explanation of price rigidity is the so-called "menu cost model" according to which small costs of changing prices may imply that firms keep nominal prices unchanged to nominal shocks which therefore have real effects. Crucial to this explanation is the assumption that price...

The role of demand management policy is considered in a two-sector open economy model with price-taking firms and imperfect competition in the labor market. Demand management policies are shown to affect the equilibrium distribution of prices and hence output in the case of both supply...