The existence of nominal rigidities and inflation differentials between countries offers two of the main rationales for an inflation buffer in a monetary union where monetary policy is oriented towards an area-wide inflation objective. Evidence accumulated since 2003 suggests that nominal...

The existence of nominal rigidities and inflation differentials between countries offers two of the main rationales for an inflation buffer in a monetary union where monetary policy is oriented towards an area-wide inflation objective. Evidence accumulated since 2003 suggests that nominal...

Smets and Wouters (2003) find that at short- and medium-term horizons stochastic variations in the goods market mark-up are the most important source of inflation variability in the euro area. This article shows that an empirically plausible alternative interpretation is that the estimated price...

This paper compares the Calvo model with a Taylor contracting model in the context of the Smets-Wouters (2003) Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model. In the Taylor price setting model, we introduce firm-specific production factors and discuss how this assumption can help to reduce...

We review the recent literature that studies new, detailed micro data on prices. We discuss implications of the new micro data for macro models. We argue that the new micro data are helpful for macro models, but not decisive. There is no simple mapping from the frequency of price changes in...

This paper compares the Calvo model with a Taylor contracting model in the context of the Smets-Wouters (2003) Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model. In the Taylor price setting model, we introduce firm-specific production factors and discuss how this assumption can help to reduce...