Jordi Galí

Inflation Dynamics: A Structural Econometric Analysis

We develop and estimate a structural model of inflation that allows for a fraction of firms that use a backward looking rule to set prices. The model nests the purely forward looking New Keynesian Phillips curve as a particular case. We use measures of arginal cost as the relevant determinant of inflation, as the theory suggests, instead of an ad-hoc output gap. Real marginal costs are a significant and quantitatively important determinant of inflation. Backward looking price setting, while statistically significant, is not quantitatively important. Thus, we conclude that the New Keynesian Phillips curve provides a good first approximation to the dynamics of inflation.

Understanding the effects of government spending on consumption

Recent evidence on the effect of government spending shocks on consumption cannot be easily reconciled with existing optimizing business cycle models. We extend the standard New Keynesian model to allow for the presence of rule-of-thumb (non-Ricardian) consumers. We show how the interaction of the latter with sticky prices and deficit financing can account for the existing evidence on the effects of government spending

Sources of Real Exchange Rate Fluctuations: How Important are Nominal Shocks?

This paper investigates empirically and attempts to identify the sources of real exchange rate fluctuations since the collapse of Bretton Woods. The papers first two sections survey and extend earlier, non-structural empirical work on this subject by Campbell and Clarida (1987), Meese and Rogoff (1988), and Cumby and Huizinga (1990). The papers main contribution is to build and estimate a three equation open macro model in the spirit of Dornbusch (1976) and Obstfeld (1985) and to identify the models structural shocks - to demand, supply, and money -using the approach pioneered by Blanchard and Quah (1989). For two of the four countries we study, Germany and Japan, our structural estimates imply that monetary shocks, to money supply as well as to the demand for real money balances, explain a substantial amount of the variance of real exchange rates relative to the dollar. We find that demand shocks, to national saving and investment, explain the majority of the variance in real exchange rate fluctuations, while supply shocks explain very little. The models estimated short run dynamics are strikingly consistent with the predictions of the simple textbook Mundell-Fleming model.

Real Wage Rigidities and the New Keynesian Model

Most central banks perceive a trade-off between stabilizing inflation and stabilizing the gap between output and desired output. However, the standard new Keynesian framework implies no such trade-off. In that framework, stabilizing inflation is equivalent to stabilizing the welfare-relevant output gap. In this paper, we argue that this property of the new Keynesian framework, which we call the divine coincidence, is due to a special feature of the model: the absence of non-trivial real imperfections. We focus on one such real imperfection, namely, real wage rigidities. When the baseline new Keynesian model is extended to allow for real wage rigidities, the divine coincidence disappears, and central banks indeed face a trade-off between stabilizing inflation and stabilizing the welfare-relevant output gap. We show that not only does the extended model have more realistic normative implications, but it also has appealing positive properties. In particular, it provides a natural interpretation for the dynamic inflation-unemployment relation found in the data.

The Macroeconomic Effects of Oil Price Shocks: Why are the 2000s so Different from the 1970s?

We characterize the macroeconomics performance of a set of industrialized economies in the aftermath of the oil price shocks of the 1970s and of the last decade, focusing on the differences across episodes. We examine four different hypotheses for the mild effects on inflation and economic activity of the recent increase in the price of oil: (a) good luck (i.e. lack of concurrent adverse shocks), (b) smaller share of oil in production, (c) more flexible labor markets, and (d) improvements in monetary policy. We conclude that all four have played an important role.

Monetary Policy and Exchange Rate Volatility in a Small Open Economy

We lay out a small open economy version of the Calvo sticky price model, and show how the equilibrium dynamics can be reduced to a tractable canonical system in domestic inflation and the output gap. We employ this framework to analyze the macroeconomic implications of three alternative monetary policy regimes for the small open economy: domestic inflation targeting, CPI targeting and an exchange rate peg. We show that a key difference among these regimes lies in the relative amount of exchange rate volatility that they entail. We also discuss a special case for which domestic inflation targeting constitutes the optimal policy, and where a simple second order approximation to the utility of the representative consumer can be derived and used to evaluate the welfare losses associated with suboptimal regimes.

How Well Does The IS-LM Model Fit Postwar U. S. Data?

Postwar U. S. time series for money, interest rates, prices, and GNP are characterized by a multivariate process driven by four exogenous disturbances. Those disturbances are identified so that they can be interpreted as the four main sources of fluctuations found in the IS-LM-Phillips curve model: money supply, money demand, IS, and aggregate supply shocks. The dynamic properties of the estimated model are analyzed and shown to match most of the stylized predictions of the model. The estimated decomposition is also used to measure the relative importance of each shock, to interpret some macroeconomic episodes, and to study sources of permanent shocks to nominal variables.

Markups, gaps and the welfare costs of business fluctuations

In this paper we present a simple theory-based measure of the variations in aggregate economic efficiency: the gap between the marginal product of labor and the households consumption/leisure tradeoff. We show that this indicator corresponds to the inverse of the markup of price over social marginal cost, and give some evidence in support of this interpretation. We then show, that, with some auxilliary assumptions our gap variable may be used to measure the efficiency costs of business fluctuations. We find that the latter costs are modest on average. However, to the extent the flexible price equilibrium is distorted, the gross efficiency losses from recessions and gains from booms may be large. Indeed, we find that the major recessions involved large efficiency losses. These results hold for reasonable parameterizations of the Frisch elasticity of labor supply, the coefficient of relative risk aversion, and steady state distortions.

Technology Shocks and Aggregate Fluctuations: How Well Does the RBC Model Fit Postwar U.S. Data? ∗

Our answer: Not so well. We reached that conclusion after reviewing recent research on the role of technology as a source of economic fluctuations. The bulk of the evidence suggests a limited role for aggregate technology shocks, pointing instead to demand factors as the main force behind the strong positive comovement between output and labor input measures.

Government size and macroeconomic stability

Abstract We analyze the effects of government size on output variability in the context of a RBC model in which government size is parameterized by the income tax rate and the share of government purchases in output. The model implies that: (i) income taxes are destabilizing, and (ii) for most specifications considered, government purchases are stabilizing. We compare those predictions with the results of simple cross-country regressions using data for 22 OECD countries. The estimated relationship between empirical indicators of government size and measures of GDP variability appears far stronger than the model predicts, and often has the opposite sign.