IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedfwp/101697.html

Evaluating Macroeconomic Outcomes Under Asymmetries: Expectations Matter

Author

Abstract

Asymmetries play an important role in many macroeconomic models. We show that assumptions on household and firm expectations play a key role in determining the effects of these asymmetries on macroeconomic outcomes. If households and firms have perfect foresight and hence do not account for the possibility of future shocks, then the implied longer-run averages and distributions for unemployment and inflation can differ significantly from their rational expectations counterparts. We first derive this result analytically under either an asymmetric monetary policy rule or a nonlinear Phillips curve before numerically examining some of the key nonlinearities featured in the recent literature.

Suggested Citation

  • Brent Bundick & Isabel Cairó & Nicolas Petrosky-Nadeau, 2025. "Evaluating Macroeconomic Outcomes Under Asymmetries: Expectations Matter," Working Paper Series 2025-17, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedfwp:101697
    DOI: 10.24148/wp2025-17
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.frbsf.org/wp-content/uploads/wp2025-17.pdf
    File Function: Full text - article PDF
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.24148/wp2025-17?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gust, Christopher & López-Salido, David & Meyer, Steve, 2017. "Asymmetric monetary policy and the effective lower bound," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 441-451.
    2. Guerrieri, Luca & Iacoviello, Matteo, 2015. "OccBin: A toolkit for solving dynamic models with occasionally binding constraints easily," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 22-38.
    3. Mary C. Daly & Bart Hobijn, 2014. "Downward Nominal Wage Rigidities Bend the Phillips Curve," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 46(S2), pages 51-93, October.
    4. Elsby, Michael W.L., 2009. "Evaluating the economic significance of downward nominal wage rigidity," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 154-169, March.
    5. Kim, Jinill & Ruge-Murcia, Francisco J., 2009. "How much inflation is necessary to grease the wheels?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 365-377, April.
    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. Dupraz, Stéphane & Nakamura, Emi & Steinsson, Jón, 2025. "A plucking model of business cycles," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    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. Baqaee, David Rezza, 2020. "Asymmetric inflation expectations, downward rigidity of wages, and asymmetric business cycles," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 174-193.
    4. 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.
    5. Mineyama, Tomohide, 2022. "Revisiting the optimal inflation rate with downward nominal wage rigidity: The role of heterogeneity," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    6. Tomohide Mineyama, 2023. "Downward Nominal Wage Rigidity and Inflation Dynamics during and after the Great Recession," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 55(5), pages 1213-1244, August.
    7. Wataru Hirata & Toshitaka Maruyama & Tomohide Mineyama, 2020. "Flattening of the Wage Phillips Curve and Downward Nominal Wage Rigidity: The Japanese Experience in the 2010s," Bank of Japan Working Paper Series 20-E-4, Bank of Japan.
    8. Jean-François Rouillard, 2017. "Credit Crunch and Downward Nominal Wage Rigidities," Cahiers de recherche 17-05, Departement d'économique de l'École de gestion à l'Université de Sherbrooke, revised Apr 2019.
    9. Joel Wagner, 2018. "Downward nominal wage rigidity in Canada: Evidence against a “greasing effect”," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(3), pages 1003-1028, August.
    10. Pierpaolo Benigno & Luca Antonio Ricci, 2011. "The Inflation-Output Trade-Off with Downward Wage Rigidities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1436-1466, June.
    11. Steinar Holden & Fredrik Wulfsberg, 2014. "Wage Rigidity, Inflation, and Institutions," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 116(2), pages 539-569, April.
    12. Bruce Fallick & Daniel Villar Vallenas & William L. Wascher, 2016. "Downward Nominal Wage Rigidity in the United States During and After the Great Recession," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2016-001r1, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), revised 15 May 2020.
    13. Mary C. Daly & Bart Hobijn, 2014. "Downward Nominal Wage Rigidities Bend the Phillips Curve," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 46(S2), pages 51-93, October.
    14. de Ridder, M. & Pfajfar, D., 2017. "Policy Shocks and Wage Rigidities: Empirical Evidence from Regional Effects of National Shocks," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1717, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    15. Nadav Ben Zeev, 2019. "Asymmetric Business Cycles In Emerging Market Economies," Working Papers 1909, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    16. Fallick, Bruce & Villar, Daniel & Wascher, William, 2022. "Downward nominal wage rigidity in the United States in times of economic distress and low inflation," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    17. Mario Forni & Luca Sala & Luca Gambetti & Davide Debortoli, 2023. "Nonlinear Monetary Policy Tradeoffs," Working Papers 1404, Barcelona School of Economics.
    18. Robert Amano & Stefano Gnocchi, 2023. "Downward Nominal Wage Rigidity Meets the Zero Lower Bound," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 55(4), pages 859-887, June.
    19. Yuto Iwasaki & Ichiro Muto & Mototsugu Shintani, 2018. "Missing Wage Inflation? Downward Wage Rigidity and the Natural Rate of Unemployment," Bank of Japan Research Laboratory Series 18-E-3, Bank of Japan.
    20. Montes-Galdón, Carlos & Ajevskis, Viktors & Brázdik, František & Garcia, Pablo & Gatt, William & Lima, Diana & Mavromatis, Kostas & Ortega, Eva & Papadopoulou, Niki & De Lorenzo, Ivan & Kolb, Benedikt, 2024. "Using structural models to understand macroeconomic tail risks," Occasional Paper Series 357, European Central Bank.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fip:fedfwp:101697. 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: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Research Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbsfus.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.