Should central banks increase their degree of transparency any further? We show that there is likely to be an optimal intermediate degree of central bank transparency. Up to this optimum more transparency is desirable: it improves the quality of private sector inflation forecasts. But beyond the...

In the period 1998-2007, inflation very often deviated from inflation targets of the Czech National Bank, most of these deviations being in the direction of undershooting the targeted level. In this paper, a purely statistical, model-independent procedure is used to search for an answer to the...

This paper introduces deep habits into a sticky-price sticky-wage economy and asks whether the countercyclical markup movements induced by deep habits is helpful for accounting for the dynamic effects of monetary policy shocks. We find that this is the case: When allowing for deep habits, the...

This paper introduces deep habits into a sticky-price sticky-wage economy and asks whether the countercyclical markup movements induced by deep habits is helpful for accounting for the dynamic effects of monetary policy shocks. We find that this is the case: When allowing for deep habits, the...

In this Paper we estimate a small model of the Euro area to be used as a laboratory for evaluating the performance of alternative monetary policy strategies. We start with the relationship between output and inflation and investigate the fit of the nominal wage contracting model due to Taylor...

This paper analyses a new-Keynesian model incorporating hysteresis in output. Specifically, we assume that the natural rate of output sluggishly adjusts towards current output. We also assume that the natural rate has an upper bound and that, in addition to having standard objectives, the...

In this paper we incorporate a labor market with matching frictions and wage rigidities into the New Keynesian business cycle model. In particular, we analyze the effect of a monetary policy shock and investigate how labor market frictions affect the transmission process of monetary policy. The...

We formulate a generalized price-setting framework that incorporates staggered contracts of multiple durations and that enables us to directly identify the influences of nominal vs. real rigidities. Using German macroeconomic data over the period 1975Q1 through 1998Q4 to estimate this framework,...

The New Keynesian Phillips Curve is at the center of two raging empirical debates. First,vhow can purely forward looking pricing account for the observed persistence in aggregate inflation. Second, price-setting responds to movements in marginal costs, which should therefore be the driving force...