The paper extends the efficiency wages Phillips curve from a closed economy context to an open economy one with both commodity trade and capital mobility. Opening the trade account does not alter the slope of the Phillips curve, but it makes its position a function of the change of foreign and...

We consider the effect of money illusion - defined referring to Stevens' ratio estimation function - on the long-run Phillips curve in an otherwise standard New Keynesian model of sticky wages. We show that if households under-perceive real economic variables, negative money...

The present paper explores the connection between inflation and unemployment in different models with fair wages both in the short and in the long runs. Under customary assumptions regarding the sign of the parameters of the effort function, more inflation lowers the unemployment rate, though to...

The Friedman rule states that steady-state welfare is maximized when there is deflation at the real rate of interest. Recent work by Khan et al (2003) uses a richer model but still finds deflation optimal. In an otherwise standard new Keynesian model we show that, if households have hyperbolic...

Milton Friedman's contributions to and influence on macroeconomics are discussed, beginning with his work on the consumption function and the demand for money, not to mention monetary history, which helped to undermine the post World War 2 "Keynesian" consensus in the area. His inter-related...

We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model to analyze the effects of central bank purchases of government bonds by investigating the following three questions: Under what conditions are these purchases socially desirable, what incentive problems do they mitigate, and how large are these...

In this paper, the evidence collected in the large literature on testing for Granger-causality from money to output is revisited. Using a broad data base of 14 EU-countries plus Canada, the US and Japan, and quarterly data from the mid 60s to the mid 90s, a number of hypotheses from this...

We develop a microfounded model, where agents have the possibility to trade money for government bonds in an over-the-counter market. It allows us to address important open questions about the effects of central bank purchases of government bonds, these being: under what conditions these...

We scrutinize the monetary transmission mechanism in New-Keynesian models, focusing on the role of capital, the key ingredient in the transition from the basic framework to DSGE models. The widely held view that monetary policy affects output and inflation in these models through a real interest...

This paper explores zero lower bound (ZLB) economics. The ZLB is widely invoked to explain stagnation and it fits with the long tradition that argues Keynesian economics is a special case based on nominal rigidities. The ZLB represents the newest rigidity. Contrary to ZLB economics, not only...