In order to avoid writing a comment that may turn out to be irrelevant the author has therefore decided to comment less directly on what Bill says, and focus instead on the problem that Bill has posed and discuss some thoughts on how to go about modeling it.

NAIRU estimates are obtained from estimates of the Phillips curve – the relationship between the inflation rate on the one hand, and the unemployment rate, measures of inflationary expectations and variables representing supply shocks on the other.

Larry Ball’s paper contains two basic ideas. The first is a second generation Phillips Curve which relates changes in inflation to the level of the unemployment rate and the second is the idea that monetary policy has extremely persistent effects on the unemployment rate, well beyond effects...

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