Nominal Rigidities, Residential Investment, And Adjustment Costs

Evidence suggests that durable goods and residential housing are more flexibly priced than nondurables and services. Using a standard sticky price general equilibrium model, Barsky, House, and Kimball [American Economic Review 97(3) (2007), 984–998] demonstrate that if durable goods are flexibly priced and nondurables are sticky, then a monetary contraction leads to an expansion in production in the durable sector. This is wildly at odds with the empirical evidence. This paper demonstrates that if three features are added to the model (sticky nominal wages, housing construction adjustment costs, and habit persistence in consumption), it delivers sectoral implications that are broadly consistent with the data.