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International audience; We assess the role of demand noise (excessive optimism or pessimism about demand) together with supply noise (excessive optimism or pessimism about supply). To do so, we propose a methodology to decompose business cycles into supply, demand, supply noise and demand noise shocks, using a structural vector autoregression model. Key to our identification of both supply noise and demand noise is the use of sign restrictions on survey expectation errors about output growth and about inflation. We show that demand-related noise shocks have a negative effect on output and contribute substantially to its fluctuations. Monetary policy and private information seem to play a key role in the transmission of demand noise shocks.

International audience; The paper investigates how endogenous markups affect the extent to which policy reforms can influence international competitiveness. In a two-country model where trade costs allow for international market segmentation, we show that endogenous pricing-to-market behavior of firms acts as an important transmission channel of the policies. By strengthening the degree of competition between firms, product market deregulation at home leads to a reduction in domestic markups, which generally leads to an improvement in the international competitiveness of the Home country. Conversely, the power of competitive tax policy to depreciate the real exchange rate is dampened, as domestic firms take the opportunity of the labor tax cut to increase their markups. The variability of markups also affects the normative implications of the reforms. This indicates the importance of taking into account endogenous pricing-to-market behavior when intending to correctly evaluate the overall effects of the reforms.; Dans cet article, nous étudions comment les taux de marge, déterminés de manière endogène par les entreprises influencent la capacité des réformes de politique économique à influer sur la compétitivité internationale. Dans un modèle à deux pays où les coûts du commerce permettent une segmentation du marché international, nous montrons que le comportement de tarification endogène des entreprises constitue un important canal de transmission des politiques. En renforçant le degré de concurrence entre les entreprises, la déréglementation des marchés de produits au niveau national entraîne une réduction des marges des entreprises locales, ce qui conduit généralement à une amélioration de la compétitivité internationale du pays d'origine. Inversement, la capacité de la politique d'allègement de la fiscalité directe du travail à déprécier le taux de change réel est atténuée, les entreprises nationales profitant de la réduction de la fiscalité du travail pour augmenter leurs marges. La variabilité des marges a également une incidence sur les implications normatives des réformes. Nos résultats soulignent ainsi l'importance de tenir compte du comportement endogène de fixation des prix des entreprises en vue d'évaluer les effets des réformes.

Ce Working Paper fait l'objet d'une publication in Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier 〈https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304393218305294〉〈hal-01995026〉; Intra-firm bargaining between a multiple-worker firm and an individual employee leads to overhiring. Taking advantage of the decreasing returns to scale in employment, the firm can reduce the marginal product by hiring an additional worker, thereby reducing the bargaining wage paid to all existing employees. We show that this externality is amplified when firms can adjust hours per worker as well as employment. Hours are too low at the steady state. This misallocation of labor leads to sizeable welfare losses. Our finding is important for economies in which hours adjustment play an important role as it does in many Euro Area countries.

Two business cycle models with endogenous firm and product entry are estimated by matching impulse responses to a monetary policy shock. The ‘competition effect’ implies that entry lowers desired markups and dampens inflation. Under translog preferences, where the substitutability between goods depends on their number, we find evidence of such an effect. That model generates more countercyclical markups than Dixit and Stiglitz (1977) monopolistic competition model, where price stickiness is the only source of markup fluctuations. In contrast, a model with strategic interactions between oligopolistic firms cannot generate an empirically relevant competition effect and is statistically equivalent to the Dixit–Stiglitz model.

[A structural evaluation of the sacrifice ratio in the euro area]. In this paper, we seek to evaluate the sacrifice ratio of the euro area using a small DSGE model where prices and wages are sticky. We estimate model's parameters so as to minimize the distance between VAR-based and model-based covariances of a set of variables. The estimated value of the sacrifice ratio reaches 1.30%. In a second step, we proceed to a set of conterfactual exercises in order to highlight the link between the sacrifice ratio and the degree of prices and wages stickiness. We obtain that a decrease of prices stickiness does not necessary result in a decrease of the sacrifice ratio. In addition, the sacrifice ratio rises with the degree of wage stickiness.

In this paper, we ask whether a small structural model with sticky prices and wages, embedding various modelling devices designed to increase the degree of strategic complementarity between price-setters, can fit postwar U.S. data. To answer this question, we resort to a two-step empirical evaluation of our model. In a first step, we estimate the model by minimizing the distance between theoretical autocovariances of key macroeconomic variables and their VAR-based empirical counterparts. In a second step, we resort to Watson's [Watson, M.W., 1993. Measures of fit for calibrated models. Journal of Political Economy 101, 1011–1041.] procedure [Measures of fit for calibrated models. Journal of Political Economy 101 (6), 1011.1041] to quantify the model's goodness-of-fit. Our main result is that the combination of sticky prices and sticky wages is central in order to obtain a good empirical fit. Our analysis also reveals that a model with only sticky wages does not perform well according to Watson's criterion [Watson, M.W., 1993. Measures of fit for calibrated models. Journal of Political Economy 101, 1011–1041.].

We investigate identification issues in estimated Taylor rules. Embedding two alternative views about monetary policy, inertia versus serially correlated shocks, in a single equation, we show that using euro data, it is impossible to discriminate between these two competing representations.

In the aftermath of the U.S. financial crisis, both a sharp drop in employment and a surge in corporate cash have been observed. In this paper, based on U.S. data, we document that the negative relationship between the corporate cash ratio and employment is systematic, both over time and across firms. We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model where heterogenous firms need cash in their production process and where financial shocks are made of both credit and liquidity shocks. We show that external liquidity shocks generate a negative comovement between the cash ratio and employment. We analyze the dynamic impact of aggregate shocks and the cross-firm impact of idiosyncratic shocks. With a calibrated version of the model, the model yields a negative comovement that is close to the data.

We characterize optimal monetary policy in a New Keynesian search-and-matching model where multiple-worker firms satisfy demand in the short run by adjusting hours per worker. Imperfect product market competition and search frictions reduce steady state hours per worker below the efficient level. Bargaining results in a convex ‘wage curve’ linking wages to hours. Since the steadystate real marginal wage is low, wages respond little to hours. As a result, firms overuse the hours margin at the expense of hiring, which makes hours too volatile. The Ramsey planner uses inflation as an instrument to dampen inefficient hours fluctuations.

This paper shows that a reform aimed at improving labor market flexibility is not necessarily welfare-enhancing. We adopt a New-Keynesian model enriched with search and matching frictions. We investigate the effects of institutional labor market reforms, described by a permanent change in firing costs and unemployment benefits. Improving labor market flexibility by cutting unemployment benefits is welfare-enhancing for households. On the contrary, cutting firing costs reduces welfare. We argue that real wage dynamics play a crucial role in the results. Furthermore, welfare effects tend to zero when the reform is pre-announced.

This paper studies the effects of three financial shocks in the economy: a net-worth shock, an uncertainty or risk shock, and a credit-spread shock. We argue that only the latter can push the nominal interest rate against its zero lower bound. Further, a recessionary shock to the net worth or the credit spread generates a positive response for loans, which is counter-intuitive during an economic downturn. Finally, we find that there is an optimal commitment period for the central bank to keep the nominal interest rate equal to zero (forward guidance) after a financial turmoil. Beyond that optimal period, the volatility of inflation and output rise quick and sharply. Thus, an excessive forward guidance policy may destabilize the economy.

This paper introduces a zero lower bound constraint on the nominal interest rate in a financial accelerator model with nominal and real rigidities. We .rst analyze the implicationsfor aggregate dynamics of binding the zero lower bound for shocks that depress the nominalinterest rate. We include a sudden decrease in the value of the business sector net worth and an increase in its returns volatility, as two financial shocks that originate in the endogenous credit market of the model. We then explore the effects of the central bank management of expectations and a fiscal stimulus in a deep recession scenario, where the interest rate initially binds its zero bound. We find that a commitment by the central bank to keep the interest rate low for more time than prescribed by a typical interest rate rule may indeed reduce the volatility of output and inflation. For government purchases, we find a fiscal multiplier greater than one for at least 5 quarters. This is due to the presence of the zero lower bound and the Fisher (1933)’s debt-deflation channel, which implies that government spending may reduce the business sector risk premium and thus the cost of investment.

We show that credit market imperfections substantially increase the government-spending multiplier when the economy enters a liquidity trap. This finding is explained by the tight association between capital goods and firmsʼ collateral, a relationship that we highlight as the capital-accumulation channel. During a liquidity trap, a government spending expansion reduces the real interest rate, leading to a period of cheap credit. Entrepreneurs use this time to accumulate capital, which persistently improves their balance sheets and reduces their future costs of credit. A public spending expansion can thus encourage private investment, yielding consequently a large spending multiplier. This effect is further reinforced by Fisherʼs debt-deflation channel.

This paper estimates a business cycle model with endogenous firm entry by matching impulse responses to a monetary policy shock in US data. Our VAR includes net business formation, profits and markups. We evaluate two channels through which entry may influence the monetary transmission process. Through the competition effect, the arrival of new entrants makes the demand for existing goods more elastic, and thus lowers desired markups and prices. Through the variety effect, increased firm and product entry raises consumption utility and thereby lowers the cost of living. This implies higher markups and, through the New Keynesian Phillips Curve, lower inflation. While the proposed model does a good job at matching the observed dynamics, it generates insufficient volatility of markups and profits. Estimates of standard parameters are largely unaffected by the introduction of firm entry. Our results lend support to the variety effect; however, we find no evidence for the competition effect.

This paper investigates how the identification assumptions of monetary policy shocks modify the inference in a standard DSGE model. Considering SVAR models in which either the interest rate is predetermined for money or money and the interest rate are simultaneously determined, two DSGE models are estimated by minimum distance estimation. The estimation results reveal that real balance effects are necessary to replicate the high persistence implied by the simultaneity assumption. In addition, the estimated monetary policy rule is sensitive to the identification scheme. This suggests that the way money is introduced in the identification scheme is not neutral for the estimation of DSGE models. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

This paper investigates the role of labor markets heterogeneity in a monetary union and especially what are the welfare gains/costs of labor market reforms for each member of the area. To this end, we develop a medium-scale two-country model representing a currency union characterized by price and wage stickiness, real rigidities and labor market frictions. We make various scenarios of labor market reform and seek to determine the direction in which a country has an incentive to direct it from a welfare perspective. We find that the choice of the instrument to direct a reform (aiming at reducing the home unemployment rate) has drastic welfare implications in the union. Reforming the domestic labor market by a stronger regulation seems to give the best output. The analysis also shows that labor markets heterogeneity has sizeable effects on the amount of welfare gains, following a reform. The more flexible the foreign labor market, the higher its welfare. Finally, a sensitivity analysis shows that (i) the way the monetary authorities conduct their policy has negligible welfare effects but (ii) the size of a country in the monetary union is far to be neutral.

In this paper, we seek to estimate the sacrifice ratio of the euro area using a small DSGE model where prices and wages are sticky. We estimate model's parameters so as to minimize the distance between VAR-based and model-based covariances of a set of variables. The estimated value of the sacrifice ratio reaches 1.30%. In a second step, we proceed to a set of counterfactual exercises in order to highlight the link between the sacrifice ratio and the degree of prices and wages stickiness. We obtain that a decrease of prices stickiness does not necessary result in a decrease of the sacrifice ratio. In addition, the sacrifice ratio rises with the degree of wage stickiness.