We propose that the natural rate of unemployment has an active role in the business cycle, in contrast to the prevailing view that the rate is essentially constant. We demonstrate that this tendency to treat the natural rate as near-constant would explain the surprisingly low slope of the...

We study the design of monetary policy in an estimated model with sticky prices, search and matching frictions, and staggered nominal wage bargaining. We find that the estimated natural rate of unemployment is consistent with the NBER description of the U.S. business cycle, and that the...

We introduce skill decay during unemployment into Blanchard and Gali's (2008) New-Keynesian model with hiring frictions and real-wage rigidity. Plausible values of quarterly skill decay and realwage rigidity turn the long-run marginal cost-unemployment relationship positive in a "European"...

We introduce inventories into a standard New Keynesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model to study the effect on the design of optimal monetary policy. The possibility of inventory investment changes the transmission mechanism in the model by decoupling production from final...

We introduce inventories into an otherwise standard New Keynesian model and study the implications for inflation dynamics. Inventory holdings are motivated as a means to generate sales for demand-constrained firms. We derive various representations of the New Keynesian Phillips curve with...

We study the properties of optimal monetary policy in an environment of nominal wage rigidity and unemployment. We show that nominal wage rigidity increases the sacrifice ratio, and therefore reduces the effectiveness of sacrificing employment in order to stabilize inflation. It follows that in...

We build a New Keynesian business-cycle model with rich household heterogeneity. A central feature is that matching frictions render labor-market risk countercyclical and endogenous to monetary policy. Our main result is that a majority of households prefer substantial stabilization of...

We introduce skill decay during unemployment into Blanchard and Gali's (2008) New-Keynesian model with hiring frictions and real-wage rigidity. Plausible values of quarterly skill decay and real-wage rigidity turn the long-run marginal cost-unemployment relationship positive in a "European"...

This paper integrates a theory of equilibrium unemployment into a monetary model with nominal price rigidities. The model is used to study the dynamic response of the economy to a monetary policy shock. The labor market displays search and matching frictions and bargaining over real wages and...