The Transmission of Productivity Shocks: What Do We Learn About DSGE Modeling?

Nominal rigidities are known to be important for the transmission of monetary policy. We argue that nominal rigidities are important also for the transmission of technology shocks, especially for explaining their effects on hours and real wages. Evidence suggests that a positive technology shock leads to a short-run decline in labor hours and a gradual rise in real wages. We examine the ability of an RBC model augmented with real frictions, a pure sticky-price model, a pure sticky-wage model, and a model combining sticky prices and sticky wages in accounting for this evidence. For each model, we examine the implications of the Frisch elasticity of hours and the extent of monetary policy accommodation for the results. We show that both sticky prices and sticky nominal wages are important for explaining the observed effects of technology shocks on labor market variables. This finding is robust and it holds with a small Frisch elasticity of hours and a relatively high frequency of price re-optimization that are consistent with microeconomic evidence.