The causal effects of central bank communication on economic expectations and their underlying mechanisms are tested in controlled laboratory experiments. We find that central bank communication has a stabilizing effect on individual and aggregate outcomes, and the size of the effect varies with...

We formulate an optimizing-agent model in which both labor and product markets exhibit monopolistic competition and staggered nominal contracts. The unconditional expectation of average household utility can be expressed in terms of the unconditional variances of the output gap, price inflation,...

This paper examines whether the existence and the timing of real balance effects contribute to the determination of the absolute price level, as suggested byPatinkin (1949,1965), and if they affect conditions for local equilibrium uniqueness and stability. I show that there exists a unique price...

In order to explain the joint fluctuations of output, inflation and the labor market, this paper first develops a general equilibrium model that integrates a theory of equilibrium unemployment into a monetary model with nominal price rigidities. Then, it estimates a set of structural parameters...

Money illusion is "frequently invoked and frequently resisted" by economists. Resisted as it contradicts the maximizing paradigm of microeconomic theory and invoked since a tendency to think in nominal rather than real terms becomes evident in the behavior of agents. This paper rationalizes...

This paper estimates a New Keynesian model with new and old behavioral elements. Agents in the model exhibit cognitive discounting, or myopia: they discount variables far into the future at higher rates than typically implied in the benchmark model. We investigate the model under different...