This paper presents a model in which price setting firms decide what to pay attention to, subject to a constraint on information flow. When idiosyncratic conditions are more variable or more important than aggregate conditions, firms pay more attention to idiosyncratic conditions than to...

Using data on product-level prices matched to the producing firm's unit labor cost, we reject the hypothesis of a full and immediate pass-through of marginal cost. Since we focus on idiosyncratic variation, this does not fit the predictions of the Maćkowiak and Wiederholt (2009) version of the...

Using data on product-level prices matched to the producing firm's unit labor cost, we reject the hyptothesis of a full and immediate pass-through of marginal cost. Since we focus on idiosyncratic variation, this does not fit the predictions of the Maćkowiak and Wiederholt (2009) version of the...

Using data on product-level prices matched to the producing firm's unit labor cost, we reject the hypothesis of a full and immediate pass-through of marginal cost. Since we focus on idiosyncratic variation, this does not fit the predictions of the Maćkowiak and Wiederholt (2009) version of the...

This paper develops a formal approach to evaluating freedom in interactive settings based on the literatures on preference for flexibility and measurement of diversity. The approach posits that freedom has an instrumental component -- grounded in preferences -- and an intrinsic component. The...

What are the welfare effects of the information contained in macroeconomic statistics, central-bank communications, or news in the media? We address this question in a business-cycle framework that nests the neoclassical core of modern DSGE models. Earlier lessons that were based on “beauty...

Economies are complicated systems encompassing micro behaviors, interaction patterns, and global regularities. Whether partial or general in scope, studies of economic systems must consider how to handle difficult real-world aspects such as asymmetric information, imperfect competition,...

This paper investigates a real-business-cycle economy that features dispersed information about the underlying aggregate productivity shocks, taste shocks, and - potentially - shocks to monopoly power. We show how the dispersion of information can (i) contribute to significant inertia in the...

This paper presents a model of a rationally inattentive seller responding to shocks to unit input cost. The model generates price series imultaneously exhibiting all three of the following features that can be found in the data. 1) Prices change frequently. 2) Responses of prices to aggregate...

Using data on product-level prices matched to the producing firm's unit labor cost, we reject the hypothesis of a full and immediate pass-through of marginal cost. Since we focus on idiosyncratic variation, this does not fit the predictions of the Mackowiak and Wiederholt (2009) version of the...