IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedgfe/2011-48.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Optimal monetary policy with state-dependent pricing

Author

Listed:
  • Anton Nakov
  • Carlos Thomas

Abstract

In an abstract economic model, we study optimal monetary policy from the timeless perspective under a general state-dependent pricing framework. We find that when firms are monopolistic competitors subject to idiosyncratic menu cost shocks, households have isoelastic preferences, and there is no government spending, strict price stability is optimal both in the long run and in response to aggregate shocks. Key to this finding is an \"envelope\" property: At zero inflation, a marginal increase in the rate of inflation has no effect on firms' profits and therefore it has no effect on the probability of price adjustment. Our results lend support to more informal statements about the suitability of the Calvo model for studying optimal monetary policy despite its apparent conflict with the Lucas critique. We offer an analytic solution that does not require local approximation or efficiency of the steady state.

Suggested Citation

  • Anton Nakov & Carlos Thomas, 2011. "Optimal monetary policy with state-dependent pricing," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2011-48, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2011-48
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2011/201148/201148abs.html
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2011/201148/201148pap.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael Dotsey & Robert G. King & Alexander L. Wolman, 1999. "State-Dependent Pricing and the General Equilibrium Dynamics of Money and Output," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(2), pages 655-690.
    2. Bakhshi, Hasan & Khan, Hashmat & Rudolf, Barbara, 2007. "The Phillips curve under state-dependent pricing," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(8), pages 2321-2345, November.
    3. Anton Nakov & Carlos Thomas, 2014. "Optimal Monetary Policy with State-Dependent Pricing," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 10(3), pages 49-94, September.
    4. Mark Gertler & Jordi Gali & Richard Clarida, 1999. "The Science of Monetary Policy: A New Keynesian Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1661-1707, December.
    5. Caballero, Ricardo J. & Engel, Eduardo M.R.A., 2007. "Price stickiness in Ss models: New interpretations of old results," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(Supplemen), pages 100-121, September.
    6. Mikhail Golosov & Robert E. Lucas Jr., 2007. "Menu Costs and Phillips Curves," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(2), pages 171-199.
    7. Woodford, Michael, 2010. "Optimal Monetary Stabilization Policy," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: Benjamin M. Friedman & Michael Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 14, pages 723-828, Elsevier.
    8. Denny Lie, 2009. "State-dependent pricing and optimal monetary policy," Working Papers 09-20, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    9. Peter J. Klenow & Oleksiy Kryvtsov, 2008. "State-Dependent or Time-Dependent Pricing: Does it Matter for Recent U.S. Inflation?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(3), pages 863-904.
    10. Calvo, Guillermo A., 1983. "Staggered prices in a utility-maximizing framework," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 383-398, September.
    11. Virgiliu Midrigan, 2011. "Menu Costs, Multiproduct Firms, and Aggregate Fluctuations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(4), pages 1139-1180, July.
    12. Mark Gertler & Jordi Gali & Richard Clarida, 1999. "The Science of Monetary Policy: A New Keynesian Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1661-1707, December.
    13. James Costain & Anton Nakov, 2011. "Price Adjustments in a General Model of State‐Dependent Pricing," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(2‐3), pages 385-406, March.
    14. Pierpaolo Benigno & Michael Woodford, 2005. "Inflation Stabilization And Welfare: The Case Of A Distorted Steady State," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 3(6), pages 1185-1236, December.
    15. Jean Boivin & Marc P. Giannoni & Ilian Mihov, 2009. "Sticky Prices and Monetary Policy: Evidence from Disaggregated US Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(1), pages 350-384, March.
    16. Reiter, Michael, 2009. "Solving heterogeneous-agent models by projection and perturbation," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 649-665, March.
    17. Maćkowiak, Bartosz & Moench, Emanuel & Wiederholt, Mirko, 2009. "Sectoral price data and models of price setting," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(S), pages 78-99.
    18. Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson, 2008. "Five Facts about Prices: A Reevaluation of Menu Cost Models," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(4), pages 1415-1464.
    19. Lucas, Robert Jr, 1976. "Econometric policy evaluation: A critique," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 19-46, January.
    20. Tack Yun, 2005. "Optimal Monetary Policy with Relative Price Distortions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(1), pages 89-109, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anton Nakov & Carlos Thomas, 2014. "Optimal Monetary Policy with State-Dependent Pricing," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 10(3), pages 49-94, September.
    2. Denny Lie, 2009. "State-dependent pricing and optimal monetary policy," Working Papers 09-20, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    3. Shuhei Takahashi, 2018. "Does State-Dependent Wage Setting Generate Multiple Equilibria?," KIER Working Papers 991, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.
    4. Muhammad Ali Nasir & Milton Yago & Alaa M. Soliman & Junjie Wu, 2016. "Financial stability, wealth effects and optimal macroeconomic policy combination in the United Kingdom: A new-Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium framework," Cogent Economics & Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(1), pages 1136098-113, December.
    5. Shuhei Takahashi, 2017. "State Dependency in Price and Wage Setting," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 13(1), pages 151-189, February.
    6. Kosuke Aoki, 2015. "Relative Prices and Inflation Stabilisation," UTokyo Price Project Working Paper Series 047, University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Economics.
    7. Zidong An & Salem Abo‐Zaid & Xuguang Simon Sheng, 2023. "Inattention and the impact of monetary policy," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(4), pages 623-643, June.
    8. Kosuke Aoki, 2015. "Relative Prices and Inflation Stabilization," The Japanese Economic Review, Japanese Economic Association, vol. 66(1), pages 35-59, March.

    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. Costain, James & Nakov, Anton, 2011. "Distributional dynamics under smoothly state-dependent pricing," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(6), pages 646-665.
    2. Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson, 2010. "Monetary Non-neutrality in a Multisector Menu Cost Model," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(3), pages 961-1013.
    3. Anton Nakov & James Costain, 2009. "Dynamics of the Price Distribution in a General Model of State-Dependent Pricing," 2009 Meeting Papers 611, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    4. Robert G. King & Alexander Wolman & Michael Dotsey, 2009. "Inflation and Real Activity with Firm Level Productivity Shocks," 2009 Meeting Papers 367, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    5. Demery, David, 2012. "State-dependent pricing and the non-neutrality of money," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 933-944.
    6. Ahrens, Steffen & Hartmann, Matthias, 2014. "State-dependence vs. timedependence: An empirical multi-country investigation of price sluggishness," Kiel Working Papers 1907, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    7. Shuhei Takahashi, 2017. "State Dependency in Price and Wage Setting," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 13(1), pages 151-189, February.
    8. Costain, James & Nakov, Anton, 2015. "Precautionary price stickiness," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 218-234.
    9. Jordi Galí & Mark Gertler, 2007. "Macroeconomic Modeling for Monetary Policy Evaluation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(4), pages 25-46, Fall.
    10. Nakov, Anton & Petit, Borja & Costain, James, 2018. "Monetary policy implications of state-dependent prices and wages," CEPR Discussion Papers 13398, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Dhyne, Emmanuel & Fuss, Catherine & Pesaran, M. Hashem & Sevestre, Patrick, 2011. "Lumpy Price Adjustments: A Microeconometric Analysis," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 29(4), pages 529-540.
    12. Lie, Denny, 2021. "Implications of state-dependent pricing for DSGE model-based policy analysis in Indonesia," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 532-552.
    13. James Costain & Anton Nakov, 2011. "Price Adjustments in a General Model of State‐Dependent Pricing," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(2‐3), pages 385-406, March.
    14. Bartosz Mackowiak & Frank Smets, 2008. "On implications of micro price data for macro models," Conference Series ; [Proceedings], Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    15. Carvalho, Carlos & Kryvtsov, Oleksiy, 2021. "Price selection," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 56-75.
    16. Mark Bils & Peter J. Klenow & Benjamin A. Malin, 2012. "Reset Price Inflation and the Impact of Monetary Policy Shocks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(6), pages 2798-2825, October.
    17. Reiter, Michael & Sveen, Tommy & Weinke, Lutz, 2013. "Lumpy investment and the monetary transmission mechanism," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(7), pages 821-834.
    18. Ricardo J. Caballero & Eduardo M.R.A. Engel, 2003. "Missing Aggregate Dynamics: On the Slow Convergence of Lumpy Adjustment Models," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1430, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised Apr 2008.
    19. Luo, Shaowen & Villar, Daniel, 2021. "The price adjustment hazard function: Evidence from high inflation periods," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    20. Caballero, Ricardo J. & Engel, Eduardo M.R.A., 2007. "Price stickiness in Ss models: New interpretations of old results," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(Supplemen), pages 100-121, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Monetary policy - Econometric models; Competition;

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation

    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:fedgfe:2011-48. 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: Ryan Wolfslayer ; Keisha Fournillier (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbgvus.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.