Many kinds of economic behavior appear to be governed by discrete and occasional individual choices. Despite this, econometric partial adjustment models perform relatively well at the aggregate level. Analyzing the classic employment adjustment problem, we show how discrete and occasional...

Economists have long suggested that nominal product prices are changed infrequently because of fixed costs. In such a setting, optimal price adjustment should depend on the state of the economy. Yet, while widely discussed, statedependent pricing has proved difficult to incorporate into...

Many kinds of economic behavior involve discrete and occasional individual choices. Despite this, econometric partial adjustment models perform relatively well at the aggregate level. Analyzing the classic employment adjustment problem, we show how such microeconomic adjustment is well described...

In a plain-vanilla New Keynesian model with two-period staggered price-setting, discretionary monetary policy leads to multiple equilibria. Complementarity between the pricing decisions of forward-looking firms underlies the multiplicity, which is intrinsically dynamic in nature. At each point...

The reduction in inflation that occurred in the early 1980s, when the Federal Reserve was headed by Paul Volcker, is arguably the most widely discussed and visible macroeconomic event of the last 50 years of U.S. history. Inflation had been dramatically rising, but under Volcker, the Fed first...