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Asymmetric In?ation Expectations, Downward Rigidity of Wages,and Asymmetric Business Cycles

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  • David R Baqaee

Abstract

This paper shows that household expectations of the inflation rate are more responsive to inflationary news than to disinflationary news. This asymmetry in inflation expectations can be a source of downward nominal wage rigidity, since workers expectations adjust more quickly to inflationary shocks than disinflationary shocks. I embed asymmetric beliefs into a general equilibrium model and show that, in such a model, monetary policy has asymmetric effects on employment, output, and wage inflation consistent with the data. I microfound asymmetric household expectations using ambiguity-aversion: households, who do not know the quality of their information, overweight inflationary news since it reduces their purchasing power, and underweight deflationary news since it increases their purchasing power. Although wages are downwardly rigid in this environment, monetary policy need not have a bias towards using inflation to grease the wheels of the labor market.
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  • David R Baqaee, 2014. "Asymmetric In?ation Expectations, Downward Rigidity of Wages,and Asymmetric Business Cycles," Working Paper 139681, Harvard University OpenScholar.
  • Handle: RePEc:qsh:wpaper:139681
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    2. Gorodnichenko, Yuriy & Sergeyev, Dmitriy, 2021. "Zero Lower Bound on Inflation Expectations," IZA Discussion Papers 14853, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. khan, sajawal, 2018. "Managing the Expectations and Monetary Policy effectiveness: Role of Inflation Targeting," MPRA Paper 93170, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 20 Feb 2019.
    4. Cosmin L. Ilut & Martin Schneider, 2022. "Modeling Uncertainty as Ambiguity: a Review," NBER Working Papers 29915, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Riccardo M Masolo & Francesca Monti, 2021. "Ambiguity, Monetary Policy and Trend Inflation," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(2), pages 839-871.
    6. Yoo, Donghoon, 2019. "Ambiguous information, permanent income, and consumption fluctuations," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 79-96.
    7. Stefan Nagel & Zhen Yan, 2022. "Inflation Hedging on Main Street? Evidence from Retail TIPS Fund Flows," NBER Working Papers 30692, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Donayre, Luiggi, 2022. "On the behavior of Okun's law across business cycles," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    9. Gabriel Chodorow-Reich & Johannes Wieland, 2020. "Secular Labor Reallocation and Business Cycles," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(6), pages 2245-2287.
    10. David O. Cushman & Glauco De Vita & Emmanouil Trachanas, 2023. "Is the Fisher effect asymmetric? Cointegration analysis and expectations measurement," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(4), pages 3727-3748, October.
    11. Tura-Gawron, Karolina, 2019. "Consumers’ approach to the credibility of the inflation forecasts published by central banks: A new methodological solution," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    12. Tsai, I-Chun, 2020. "Alternative explanation of the money illusion: The effect of unexpected low inflation," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 110-123.
    13. Metiu, Norbert & Prieto, Esteban, 2023. "The macroeconomic effects of inflation uncertainty," Discussion Papers 32/2023, Deutsche Bundesbank.
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    JEL classification:

    • E27 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications

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