In the data, individual prices change frequently and by large amounts. In standardsticky price models, frequent and large price changes imply a fast response of the aggregate price level to nominal shocks. This paper presents a model in which price setting firms optimally decide what to observe,...

A striking fact about pricing is the prevalence of \sales": large temporary price cuts followedby prices returning exactly to their former levels. This paper builds a macroeconomic modelwith a rationale for sales based on firms facing customers with different price sensitivities.Even if firms...

Agent-based Computational Economics (ACE) is the computational study of economic processesmodeled as dynamic systems of interacting agents. This essay discusses the potentialuse of ACE modeling tools for the study of macroeconomic systems. Points are illustratedusing an ACE model of a two-sector...

This paper discusses a two-sector neoclassical overlapping generationseconomy with intermediate and final goods in the spirit of Romer(1990). The risk averse agents engage in one of two alternative occupations:either firm-ownership in the intermediate goods sector, characterizedby monopolistic...

This paper investigates the effects of monopolistic competition onentrepreneurial riskRtaking in a general equilibrium model. In thiscontext, occupational choice of risk averse agents is biased towardsfirm ownership. In this case, the inefficiencies due to the presence ofnondiversifiable risk...

Using data on product-level prices matched to the producing …rm’s unit labor cost, wereject the hypothesis of a full and immediate pass-through of marginal cost. Since wefocus on idiosyncratic variation, this does not …t the predictions of the Ma´ckowiak andWiederholt (2009) version of the...

Using structural VARs, I find that external shocks are an important source of macroeconomic fluctuations in emerging markets. Furthermore, U.S. monetary policy shocks affect quickly and strongly interest rates and the exchange rate in a typical emerging market. The price level and real output in...

In recent policy debates some have argued that expansionary monetarypolicy in Japan can increase real output in Japan and in Japans neighbors,while others have warned that it is a beggar-thy-neighbor policy. In this paper weestimate structural vector autoregressions to assess the effects of...

In a country with high probability of default, higher interest rates may render the currency lessattractive if sovereign default is costly. This paper develops that intuition in a simple model andestimates the effect of changes in interest rates on the exchange rate in Brazil using data from...