I specify a simple search and matching model of the labor market and estimate it on unemployment and vacancy data for Hong Kong over the period 2000-2010 using Bayesian methods. The model fits the data remarkably well. The estimation shows that the main driver of fluctuations in the labor market...

Long-term unemployment rose dramatically during the recent recession and remains elevated. A primary cause may be the fact that more workers with inherently low job finding rates have become unemployed. This would suggest that the natural rate of unemployment has increased, and that additional...

The "unemployment gap" is an important factor in monetary policy decisions. But the size of the gap depends on the level of natural rate of unemployment, which is inherently unobservable. The uncertainty surrounding estimates of the natural rate, and the costs of mismeasuring it, may recommend a...

We demonstrate the possibility of indeterminacy and nonexistence of equilibrium dynamics in a standard business cycle model with search and matching frictions in the labor market. Our results arise for empirically plausible parameterizations and do not rely on a mechanism such as increasing returns.

We introduce inventories into an otherwise standard New Keynesian model and study the implications for inflation dynamics. Inventory holdings are motivated as a means to generate sales for demand-constrained firms. We derive various representations of the New Keynesian Phillips curve with...

Recent discussions of exchange rate determination have emphasized the possible role of foreign direct investment in influencing exchange rate behavior. Yet, there are few existing models of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and endogenous exchange rates. This paper demonstrates that the entry...

We introduce inventories into an otherwise standard New Keynesian model and study the implications for inflation dynamics. Inventory holdings are motivated as a means to generate sales for demand-constrained firms. We derive various representa- tions of the New Keynesian Phillips curve with...

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...