IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejmac/v9y2017i1p165-204.html

Liquidity Traps and Jobless Recoveries

Author

Listed:
  • Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé
  • Martín Uribe

Abstract

This paper proposes a model that explains the joint occurrence of liquidity traps and jobless growth recoveries. Its key elements are downward nominal wage rigidity, a Taylor-type interest rate feedback rule, the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates, and a confidence shock. Absent a change in policy, the model predicts that low inflation and high unemployment become chronic. With capital accumulation, the model predicts, in addition, an investment slump. The paper identifies a New Fisherian effect, whereby raising the nominal interest rate to its intended target for an extended period of time can boost inflationary expectations and thereby foster employment.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé & Martín Uribe, 2017. "Liquidity Traps and Jobless Recoveries," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 165-204, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejmac:v:9:y:2017:i:1:p:165-204
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/mac.20150220
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20150220
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=1-_KXMU2aOXJQwxCLnpN-owsLPYaicdT
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=r_K_Mf56wEhNpp0Mel5FC7RH_WC2Hsy0
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé & Martín Uribe, 2016. "Downward Nominal Wage Rigidity, Currency Pegs, and Involuntary Unemployment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 124(5), pages 1466-1514.
    2. S Borağan Aruoba & Pablo Cuba-Borda & Frank Schorfheide, 2018. "Macroeconomic Dynamics Near the ZLB: A Tale of Two Countries," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 85(1), pages 87-118.
    3. Shimer, Robert, 2012. "Wage rigidities and jobless recoveries," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(S), pages 65-77.
    4. Kuroda, Sachiko & Yamamoto, Isamu, 2003. "Are Japanese Nominal Wages Downwardly Rigid? (Part I): Examinations of Nominal Wage Change Distributions," Monetary and Economic Studies, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan, vol. 21(2), pages 1-29, August.
    5. Benhabib, Jess & Schmitt-Grohe, Stephanie & Uribe, Martin, 2001. "The Perils of Taylor Rules," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 96(1-2), pages 40-69, January.
    6. Gauti B. Eggertsson & Michael Woodford, 2003. "The Zero Bound on Interest Rates and Optimal Monetary Policy," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 34(1), pages 139-235.
    7. Florin O. Bilbiie & Tommaso Monacelli & Roberto Perotti, 2019. "Is Government Spending at the Zero Lower Bound Desirable?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 147-173, July.
    8. Guillermo A. Calvo & Fabrizio Coricelli & Pablo Ottonello, 2012. "Labor Market, Financial Crises and Inflation: Jobless and Wageless Recoveries," NBER Working Papers 18480, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Peter Gottschalk, 2005. "Downward Nominal-Wage Flexibility: Real or Measurement Error?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(3), pages 556-568, August.
    10. Kuroda, Sachiko & Yamamoto, Isamu, 2003. "Are Japanese Nominal Wages Downwardly Rigid? (Part II): Examinations Using a Friction Model," Monetary and Economic Studies, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan, vol. 21(2), pages 31-68, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Uribe, Martín & Schmitt-Grohé, Stephanie, 2012. "The Making Of A Great Contraction With A Liquidity Trap and A Jobless Recovery," CEPR Discussion Papers 9237, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Iwasaki, Yuto & Muto, Ichiro & Shintani, Mototsugu, 2021. "Missing wage inflation? Estimating the natural rate of unemployment in a nonlinear DSGE model," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    3. Roberto M. Billi & Jordi Galí, 2020. "Gains from Wage Flexibility and the Zero Lower Bound," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 82(6), pages 1239-1261, December.
    4. Zaretski, Aliaksandr, 2021. "Financial constraints, risk sharing, and optimal monetary policy," MPRA Paper 110757, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Jarociński, Marek & Maćkowiak, Bartosz, 2018. "Monetary-fiscal interactions and the euro area's malaise," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 251-266.
    6. Sohei Kaihatsu & Koichiro Kamada & Mitsuru Katagiri, 2016. "Theoretical Foundations for Quantitative Easing," IMES Discussion Paper Series 16-E-04, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan.
    7. Jeffrey R. Campbell, 2014. "Quantitative Easing in Joseph's Egypt with Keynesian Producers," Working Paper Series WP-2014-15, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    8. Sachiko Kuroda & Isamu Yamamoto, 2014. "Is Downward Wage Flexibility the Primary Factor of Japan's Prolonged Deflation?," Asian Economic Policy Review, Japan Center for Economic Research, vol. 9(1), pages 143-158, January.
    9. Ottonello, Pablo, 2021. "Optimal exchange-rate policy under collateral constraints and wage rigidity," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    10. Jinill Kim & Francisco Ruge‐Murcia, 2019. "Extreme Events And Optimal Monetary Policy," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 60(2), pages 939-963, May.
    11. Robert Kollmann, 2021. "Liquidity traps in a monetary union," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 73(4), pages 1581-1603.
    12. Bianchi, Francesco & Melosi, Leonardo & Rottner, Matthias, 2021. "Hitting the elusive inflation target," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 107-122.
    13. Jesper Lindé & Mathias Trabandt, 2018. "Should we use linearized models to calculate fiscal multipliers?," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(7), pages 937-965, November.
    14. Kollmann, Robert, 2021. "Liquidity traps in a world economy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    15. Gianluca Benigno & Luca Fornaro, 2018. "Stagnation Traps," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 85(3), pages 1425-1470.
    16. Corsetti, Giancarlo & Mavroeidi, Eleonora & Thwaites, Gregory & Wolf, Martin, 2019. "Step away from the zero lower bound: Small open economies in a world of secular stagnation," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 88-102.
    17. Seppo Honkapohja, 2016. "Monetary policies to counter the zero interest rate: an overview of research," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 43(2), pages 235-256, May.
    18. Jacopo Bonchi, 2023. "Asset Price Bubbles and Monetary Policy: Revisiting the Nexus at the Zero Lower Bound," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 47, pages 186-203, January.
    19. Taisuke Nakata & Sebastian Schmidt & Timothy Hills, 2016. "The Risky Steady State and the Interest Rate Lower Bound," 2016 Meeting Papers 39, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    20. Jean‐François Rouillard, 2023. "Credit Crunch and Downward Nominal Wage Rigidities," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 55(4), pages 889-914, June.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • E43 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • F44 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - International Business Cycles
    • G01 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Financial Crises

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aejmac:v:9:y:2017:i:1:p:165-204. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.