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 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 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 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...

This paper studies the impact of product and labor market reforms when the economy facesmajor slack and a binding constraint on monetary policy easing. such as the zero lowerbound. To this end, we build a two-country model with endogenous producer entry, labormarket frictions, and nominal...

We present and discuss the simple search and matching model of the labor market against the background of developments in modern macroeconomics. We derive a simple representation of the model in a general equilibrium context and how the model can be used to analyze various policy issues in...

We build a New Keynesian business-cycle model with rich household heterogeneity. In the model, systematic monetary stabilization policy affects the distribution of income, income risks, and the demand for funds and supply of assets: the demand, because matching frictions render idiosyncratic...

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"...