International business-cycle models assume that home and foreign goods are poor substitutes. International trade models assume they are close substitutes. This paper constructs a model where this discrepancy is due to frictions in distribution. Imports need to be combined with a local non-traded...

This paper introduces a model where agents are unsure about the central bank's inflation target. They believe that the central bank's inflation target could lie between two extremes, and their beliefs vary depending on the central bank's stock of credibility. They form the expectations used in...

This paper seeks to document and explain the effect of a commodity price shock on underlying core inflation, and how that effect changes both across time and across countries. Impulse responses derived from a structural VAR model show that across many countries there was a break in the response...

The classical dichotomy predicts that all of the time series variance in the aggregate real exchange rate is accounted for by nontraded goods in the CPI basket because traded goods obey the Law of One Price. In stark contrast, Engel (1999) found that traded goods had comparable volatility to the...

We propose a simple saving-based measure of the cyclical component in GDP. The measure is motivated by the prediction that the representative consumer changes savings in response to temporary deviations of income from its stochastic trend, while satisfying a present-value budget constraint. To...

Volatile and persistent real exchange rates are observed not only in aggregate series but also on the individual good level data. Kehoe and Midrigan (2007) recently showed that, under a standard assumption on nominal price stickiness, empirical frequencies of micro price adjustment cannot...

We develop a model of cities each inhabited by two agents, one specializing in manufacturing, the other in retail distribution. The distribution sector represents the physical transformation of all internationally traded goods from the factory gate to the final consumer. Using a panel of...

Using data for U.S. grocery and department store sales from 1919–1939, this paper shows that expected price changes have asymmetric effects on consumption spending. Department store sales (durable consumption) react negatively to expected deflation, but grocery sales (non-durable consumption)...

Temporary supply factors may boost some commodity prices—a drought in the Midwest can jolt food costs, or a conflict in the Middle East might propel oil higher. These, in turn, can increase the overall consumer price index (CPI) and the headline inflation rate. ; Because central bank...

The Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries imposed an oil embargo on the United States in October 1973 in response to U.S. support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War. The embargo was lifted in March 1974, and although it lasted less than six months, the effects on inflation and...