Empirical data suggest that new fi rms tend to grow faster than incumbent firms in terms of their productivity. A sticky-price model with learning-by-doing in new firms fi ts this data and predicts that for plausible calibrations, the optimal long-run inflation rate is positive and between 0.5%...

We document a new stylized fact for the life-cycle behavior of consumer prices: relative to a narrowly defined set of competing products, the price of individual products tends to fall over the product lifetime. This holds true for more than 90% of the expenditure items underlying the U.K....

Sticky price models featuring heterogeneous firms and systematic firm-level productivity trends deliver radically different predictions for the optimal inflation rate than their popular homogenous-firm counterparts: (1) the optimal steady-state inflation rate generically differs from zero and...

This paper investigates if the euro's effect on euro-area trade differs across trade sectors and across country pairs, and to what degree heterogeneity matters for estimating the aggregate euro effect. Time-varying latent variables, which are specific to each sector in each country pair, control...

Empirical data indicate that firms tend to have below-average productivity upon entry and that they tend to experience post-entry productivity growth. I present a New Keynesian model with growth in firm-specific productivity and firm turnover that captures these two phenomena. The model predicts...

We empirically identify the effect of inflation on relative price distortions, using a novel identification approach derived from sticky price theories with time or state-dependent adjustment frictions. Our approach can be directly applied to micro price data, does not rely on estimating the gap...

We draw on two decades of historical data to analyze how regional labor markets in West Germany adjusted to one of the largest forced population movements in history, the mass inflow of eight million German expellees after World War II. The expellee inflow was distributed very asymmetrically...

We draw on two decades of historical data to analyze how regional labor markets in West Germany adjusted to one of the largest forced population movements in history, the mass inflow of eight million German expellees after World War II. The expellee inflow was distributed very asymmetrically...

Using the official micro price data underlying the U.K. consumer price index, we document a new stylized fact for the life-cycle behavior of consumer prices: relative to a narrowly defined set of competing products, the price of individual products tends to fall over the product lifetime. We...

Using micro price data underlying the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices in France, Germany and Italy, we estimate relative price trends over the product life cycle and show that minimizing price and mark-up distortions in the presence of these trends requires targeting a significantly positive...