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Working Paper
Downward Price Rigidities and Inflationary Relative Demand Shocks
We show that a negative relative demand shock in a sector with downwardly rigid prices, like the service sector, can generate substantial inflation. Such a shock induces an equilibrium decline in the relative price of services. If price adjustment costs are non-existent or symmetric, then this takes place through a simultaneous decline in services prices and increase in goods prices, resulting in, on net, little inflation. If prices in the services sector are downwardly rigid, however, this takes place mostly through an increase in goods prices, resulting in inflation. To illustrate the ...
Working Paper
Reconstructing the great recession
This paper evaluates the role of the construction sector in accounting for the performance of the U.S. economy before, during and after the Great Recession. We use input-output analysis to evaluate its linkages with the rest of the economy and measure the transmission of its demand shocks to the overall economy. Such effects are quantified by means of a dynamic multi-sector model parameterized to reproduce the boom-bust dynamics of employment in construction during 2000-13. The model suggests that the interlinkages account for a large share of the actual changes in aggregate employment and ...
Working Paper
Aggregate Implications of Changing Sectoral Trends
We find disparate trend variation in TFP and labor growth across major U.S. production sectors over the post-WWII period. When aggregated, these sector-specific trends imply secular declines in the growth rate of aggregate labor and TFP. We embed this sectoral trend variation into a dynamic multi-sector framework in which materials and capital used in each sector are produced by other sectors. The presence of capital induces important network effects from production linkages that amplify the consequences of changing sectoral trends on GDP growth. Thus, in some sectors, changes in TFP and ...
Working Paper
Interpreting Shocks to the Relative Price of Investment with a Two-Sector Model
Consumption and investment comove over the business cycle in response to shocks that permanently move the price of investment. The interpretation of these shocks has relied on standard one-sector models or on models with two or more sectors that can be aggregated. However, the same interpretation continues to go through in models that cannot be aggregated into a standard one-sector model. Furthermore, such a two-sector model with distinct factor input shares across production sectors and commingling of sectoral outputs in the assembly of final consumption and investment goods, in line with ...