Three Essays in Macroeconomics.

Chapter 1: Traditional models of monetary transmission such as sticky price and limited partic- ipation abstract from firm creation and destruction. Only a few papers look at the empirical effects of the monetary shock on the firm turnover measures. But what can we learn about monetary transmission by including measures for firm turnover into the theoretical and empirical models? Based on a large scale vector autore- gressive (VAR) model for the U.S. economy I show that a contractionary monetary policy shock increases the number of business bankruptcy filings and failures, and decreases the creation of firms and net entry. According to the limited participation model, a contractionary monetary shock leads to a drop in the number of firms. On the contrary the same shock in the sticky price model increases the number of firms. Therefore the empirical findings support more the limited participation type of monetary transmission.Chapter 2: We introduce deep habits into a sticky-price sticky-wage economy and examine the resulting models ability to account for the impact of monetary policy shocks. The deep habits mechanism gives rise to countercyclical markup movements even when prices are flexible and interacts with nominal rigidities in interesting ways. Key parameters are estimated using a limited information approach. The deep habits model can account very precisely for the persistent impact of monetary policy shocks on aggregate consumption and for both the price puzzle and inflation persistence. A key insight is that the deep habits mechanism and nominal rigidities are comple- mentary: The deep habits model can account for the dynamic effects of monetary policy shock at low to moderate levels of nominal rigidities. The results are shown to be stable over time and not caused by monetary policy changes.Chapter 3: In a standard New-Keynesian DSGE model exogenous price markup and cost-push shocks generate most of the volatility in inflation. The key equation determining inflation is the New Keynesian Phillips curve. Several authors have proposed mod- ifications to the forward looking Phillips curve. In this paper I concentrate on the effects of endogenous markups due to firm turnover and the importance of financial friction. My findings show that entry cost shocks are important in explaining the dynamics of inflation at the business cycle frequency. Financial friction does not change the relative importance of the structural shocks in explaining inflation.

Deep Habits and the Dynamic Effects of Monetary Policy Shocks

This paper introduces deep habits into a sticky-price sticky-wage economy and asks whether the countercyclical markup movements induced by deep habits is helpful for accounting for the dynamic effects of monetary policy shocks. We find that this is the case: When allowing for deep habits, the model can account very precisely for the persistent impact of monetary policy shocks on aggregate consumption and for the impact on inflation that other models have hard a time explaining. In particular, the model can account both for the price puzzle and for inflation persistence. We also show that the deep habits mechanism and nominal rigidities are complementary: The deep habits model can account for the dynamic effects of monetary policy shock at low to moderate levels of nominal rigidities. We show that the results are stable over time and are not caused by monetary policy changes.deep habits, monetary policy, price puzzle, inflation persistence, countercyclical markups

Three Essays in Macroeconomics

Defense Date: 18/02/2011 Jury Members: Prof. Morten Ravn, University College London, Supervisor Prof. Giancarlo Corsetti, EUI and University of Cambridge Prof. Fabio Canova, Universitat Pompeu Fabra Dr. Luca Dedola, European Central BankChapter 1: Traditional models of monetary transmission such as sticky price and limited partic- ipation abstract from firm creation and destruction. Only a few papers look at the empirical effects of the monetary shock on the firm turnover measures. But what can we learn about monetary transmission by including measures for firm turnover into the theoretical and empirical models? Based on a large scale vector autore- gressive (VAR) model for the U.S. economy I show that a contractionary monetary policy shock increases the number of business bankruptcy filings and failures, and decreases the creation of firms and net entry. According to the limited participation model, a contractionary monetary shock leads to a drop in the number of firms. On the contrary the same shock in the sticky price model increases the number of firms. Therefore the empirical findings support more the limited participation type of monetary transmission.Chapter 2: We introduce deep habits into a sticky-price sticky-wage economy and examine the resulting models ability to account for the impact of monetary policy shocks. The deep habits mechanism gives rise to countercyclical markup movements even when prices are flexible and interacts with nominal rigidities in interesting ways. Key parameters are estimated using a limited information approach. The deep habits model can account very precisely for the persistent impact of monetary policy shocks on aggregate consumption and for both the price puzzle and inflation persistence. A key insight is that the deep habits mechanism and nominal rigidities are comple- mentary: The deep habits model can account for the dynamic effects of monetary policy shock at low to moderate levels of nominal rigidities. The results are shown to be stable over time and not caused by monetary policy changes.Chapter 3: In a standard New-Keynesian DSGE model exogenous price markup and cost-push shocks generate most of the volatility in inflation. The key equation determining inflation is the New Keynesian Phillips curve. Several authors have proposed mod- ifications to the forward looking Phillips curve. In this paper I concentrate on the effects of endogenous markups due to firm turnover and the importance of financial friction. My findings show that entry cost shocks are important in explaining the dynamics of inflation at the business cycle frequency. Financial friction does not change the relative importance of the structural shocks in explaining inflation

The effect of financial depth on monetary transmission

Several papers have looked at the relationship between country-specific factors and the strength of monetary transmission. For example, Cecchetti (1999) concentrated on legal aspects, while De Grauwe and Storti (2004) focused more on the financial structure of the economy. The objective of this paper is to measure how financial development variables influence the strength of monetary transmission in the European countries. This paper employs a meta-analysis technique that has gained much popularity in recent years. According to the results, monetary transmission in Europe is strongly influenced by financial depth and structure

Deep Habits and the Dynamic Effects of Monetary Policy Shocks

This paper introduces deep habits into a sticky-price sticky-wage economy and asks whether the countercyclical markup movements induced by deep habits is helpful for accounting for the dynamic effects of monetary policy shocks. We find that this is the case: When allowing for deep habits, the model can account very precisely for the persistent impact of monetary policy shocks on aggregate consumption and for the impact on inflation that other models have hard a time explaining. In particular, the model can account both for the price puzzle and for inflation persistence. We also show that the deep habits mechanism and nominal rigidities are complementary: The deep habits model can account for the dynamic effects of monetary policy shock at low to moderate levels of nominal rigidities. We show that the results are stable over time and are not caused by monetary policy changes

Deep habits and the dynamic effects of monetary policy shocks

We introduce deep habits into a sticky-price sticky-wage economy and examine the resulting models ability to account for the impact of monetary policy shocks. The deep habits mechanism gives rise to countercyclical markup movements even when prices are flexible and interacts with nominal rigidities in interesting ways. Key parameters are estimated using a limited information approach. The deep habits model can account very precisely for the persistent impact of monetary policy shocks on aggregate consumption and for both the price puzzle and inflation persistence. A key insight is that the deep habits mechanism and nominal rigidities are complementary: the deep habits model can account for the dynamic effects of monetary policy shock at low to moderate levels of nominal rigidities. The results are shown to be stable over time and not caused by monetary policy changes.Deep habits Monetary policy Price puzzle Inflation persistence Countercyclical markups