IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this paper

An alternative explanation of the price puzzle

Author Info

Listed author(s):
  • Giordani, Paolo

    ()

    (Dept. of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics)

Abstract

This paper proposes a simple explanation for the frequent appearance of a price puzzle in VARs designed for monetary policy analysis. It suggests that the best method of solving the puzzle implies a close connection between theory and empirics rather than the introduction of a commodity price. It proves that the omission of a measure of output gap (or potential output) spuriously produces a price puzzle (and several other incorrect conclusions) in a wide class of commonly used models. This can happen even if the model admits a triangular identification and if the forecasts produced by the misspecified VAR are optimal. When the model is tested on US data, all predictions are supported.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://swopec.hhs.se/hastef/papers/hastef0414.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Paper provided by Stockholm School of Economics in its series SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance with number 414.

as
in new window

Length: 37 pages
Date of creation: 04 Dec 2000
Date of revision: 19 Nov 2001
Handle: RePEc:hhs:hastef:0414
Contact details of provider: Postal:
The Economic Research Institute, Stockholm School of Economics, P.O. Box 6501, 113 83 Stockholm, Sweden

Phone: +46-(0)8-736 90 00
Fax: +46-(0)8-31 01 57
Web page: http://www.hhs.se/
Email:


More information through EDIRC

Keywords: Price puzzle; monetary policy; misspecification; output gap; potential output; technology shocks; VAR;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • E30 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
  • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

as
in new window


  1. Soderlind, Paul, 1999. "Solution and estimation of RE macromodels with optimal policy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(4-6), pages 813-823, April.
  2. Blanchard, Olivier Jean & Quah, Danny, 1989. "The Dynamic Effects of Aggregate Demand and Supply Disturbances," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 655-673, September.
  3. Richard Clarida & Jordi Gali, 1994. "Sources of real exchange rate fluctuations: how important are nominal shocks?," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, issue Apr.
  4. Jordi Galí, 1992. "How Well Does The IS-LM Model Fit Postwar U. S. Data?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 107(2), pages 709-738.
  5. Svensson, Lars E. O., 1997. "Inflation forecast targeting: Implementing and monitoring inflation targets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(6), pages 1111-1146, June.
  6. Laurence M. Ball, 1999. "Policy Rules for Open Economies," NBER Chapters,in: Monetary Policy Rules, pages 127-156 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  7. Svensson, Lars-E-O, 2001. "The Zero Bound in an Open Economy: A Foolproof Way of Escaping from a Liquidity Trap," Monetary and Economic Studies, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan, vol. 19(S1), pages 277-312, February.
  8. Eric M. Leeper & Tao Zha, 2001. "Assessing simple policy rules: A view from a complete macroeconomic model," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, issue Q4, pages 35-58.
  9. Glenn Rudebusch & Lars E.O. Svensson, 1999. "Policy Rules for Inflation Targeting," NBER Chapters,in: Monetary Policy Rules, pages 203-262 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  10. Bagliano, Fabio C. & Favero, Carlo A., 1998. "Measuring monetary policy with VAR models: An evaluation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(6), pages 1069-1112, June.
  11. Sims, Christopher A., 1992. "Interpreting the macroeconomic time series facts : The effects of monetary policy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 36(5), pages 975-1000, June.
  12. Canova, Fabio, 1998. "Detrending and business cycle facts," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 475-512, May.
  13. Svensson, Lars E. O., 1999. "Inflation targeting as a monetary policy rule," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 607-654, June.
  14. Julio Rotemberg & Michael Woodford, 1997. "An Optimization-Based Econometric Framework for the Evaluation of Monetary Policy," NBER Chapters,in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1997, Volume 12, pages 297-361 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  15. Fuhrer, Jeffrey C & Moore, George R, 1995. "Monetary Policy Trade-offs and the Correlation between Nominal Interest Rates and Real Output," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(1), pages 219-239, March.
  16. Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Charles L. Evans, 2005. "Nominal Rigidities and the Dynamic Effects of a Shock to Monetary Policy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(1), pages 1-45, February.
  17. Christiano, Lawrence J. & Eichenbaum, Martin & Evans, Charles L., 1999. "Monetary policy shocks: What have we learned and to what end?," Handbook of Macroeconomics,in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 65-148 Elsevier.
  18. John P. Judd & Glenn D. Rudebusch, 1998. "Taylor's rule and the Fed, 1970-1997," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, pages 3-16.
  19. Fabio Canova & Joaquim Pires Pina, 1998. "Monetary policy misspecification in VAR models," Economics Working Papers 420, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Sep 1999.
  20. Stock, James H. & Watson, Mark W., 1999. "Forecasting inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 293-335, October.
  21. Joutz, Fred & Stekler, H. O., 2000. "An evaluation of the predictions of the Federal Reserve," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 17-38.
  22. Svensson, Lars E. O., 2000. "Open-economy inflation targeting," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 155-183, February.
  23. David H. Romer, 2000. "Keynesian Macroeconomics without the LM Curve," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(2), pages 149-169, Spring.
  24. Eric M. Leeper & Christopher A. Sims & Tao Zha, 1996. "What Does Monetary Policy Do?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 27(2), pages 1-78.
  25. Scott, Alasdair, 2003. "APPLIED MACROECONOMETRICS Carlo A. Favero Oxford University Press, 2001," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 7(02), pages 313-315, April.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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

as
in new window


Cited by:
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:hastef:0414. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Helena Lundin)

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.