Optimal monetary policy and firm entry. NBB Working Paper 178, October 2009

This paper describes optimal monetary policy in an economy with monopolistic competition, endogenous firm entry, a cash-in-advance constraint and pre-set wages. Firms must make profits in order to cover entry costs; thus a mark-up on goods prices is necessary. Without this mark-up, profits would be zero and no firm would enter the market, resulting in zero production. Therefore, the mark-up should not be removed. In this economy with market entrants, goods are more expensive than in a competitive economy with marginal cost pricing. This leads to a misallocation of resources, because leisure is not sold at a mark-up. Goods and leisure are two sources of utility that households trade off against each other. Thus, they may buy too much leisure instead of consumption goods. The consequence is that labour supply and production are sub-optimally low. Due to the labour requirement at market entry stage, insufficient labour supply also implies too little entry and too few firms in equilibrium. In the absence of fiscal instruments such as labour income subsidies, the optimal monetary policy under sticky wages achieves higher welfare than under flexible wages. The policy-maker uses the money supply instrument to raise the real wage - the cost of leisure - above its flexible-wage level, in response to expansionary shocks. This induces a rise in labour supply, more production of goods and more new firms

Optimal monetary policy and firm entry

This paper characterises optimal monetary policy in an economy with endogenous firm entry, a cash-in-advance constraint and preset wages. Firms must make profits to cover entry costs; thus the markup on goods prices is efficient. However, because leisure is not priced at a markup, the consumption-leisure tradeoff is distorted. Consequently, the real wage, hours and production are suboptimally low. Due to the labour requirement in entry, insufficient labour supply also implies that entry is too low. The paper shows that in the absence of fiscal instruments such as labour income subsidies, the optimal monetary policy under sticky wages achieves higher welfare than under flexible wages. The policy maker uses the money supply instrument to raise the real wage - the cost of leisure - above its flexible-wage level, in response to expansionary shocks to productivity and entry costs. This raises labour supply, expanding production and rm entry

Optimal monetary policy and firm entry

This paper describes optimal monetary policy in an economy with monopolistic competition, endogenous firm entry, a cash-in-advance constraint and pre-set wages. Firms must make profits in order to cover entry costs; thus a mark-up on goods prices is necessary. Without this mark-up, profits would be zero and no firm would enter the market, resulting in zero production. Therefore, the mark-up should not be removed. In this economy with market entrants, goods are more expensive than in a competitive economy with marginal cost pricing. This leads to a misallocation of resources, because leisure is not sold at a mark-up. Goods and leisure are two sources of utility that households trade off against each other. Thus, they may buy too much leisure instead of consumption goods. The consequence is that labour supply and production are sub-optimally low. Due to the labour requirement at market entry stage, insufficient labour supply also implies too little entry and too few firms in equilibrium. In the absence of fiscal instruments such as labour income subsidies, the optimal monetary policy under sticky wages achieves higher welfare than under flexible wages. The policy-maker uses the money supply instrument to raise the real wage - the cost of leisure - above its flexible-wage level, in response to expansionary shocks. This induces a rise in labour supply, more production of goods and more new firmsentry, optimal policy

Macroeconomic fluctuations and firm entry : theory and evidence

This paper studies the behaviour of firm entry and exit in response to macroeconomic shocks. We formulate a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with an endogenous number of producers. From the calibrated model, we derive a minimum set of robust sign restrictions to identify four kinds of macroeconomic shocks in a vector autoregression, namely supply, demand, monetary and entry cost shocks. The variables entering the VAR are output, inflation, the nominal interest rate, profits and firm entry. The response of firm entry to the various shocks is freely estimated. Our main finding is that entry responds significantly to all types of shocks. The results also show a crowding-in of firm entry following an exogenous rise in demand, consistent with the effect of a consumption preference shock predicted by the modelfirm entry, VAR, business cycles

Business cycle evidence on firm entry

Business cycle models with sticky prices and endegenous firm entry make novel predictions on the transmission of shocks through the extensive margin of investment. This paper tests some of these predictions using a vector autoregression with model-based sign restrictions. We find a positive and significant response of firm entry to expansionary shocks to productivity, aggregate spending, monetary policy and entry costs. The estimated response to a monetary expansion does not support the monetary policy transmission mechanism proposed by the model. Insofar as firm startups require labour services, wage stickiness is needed to make the signs of the model responses consistent with the estimated ones. The shapes of the empirical responses suggest that congestion effects in entry make it harder for new firms to survive when the number of startups rises. --firm entry,business cycles,VAR

Productivity and the Real Euro-Dollar Exchange Rate

This paper analyses empirically how changes in productivity affect the real eurodollar exchange rate. We consider the two-sector new open macro model in Benigno and Thoenissen (2003). The model predictions are used, in the form of sign restrictions, to identify productivity shocks in a structural vector autoregression. We estimate economy-wide and traded sector productivity shocks, controlling for demand and nominal factors. Our results show that productivity shocks are much less important in explaining the variation in the euro-dollar exchange rate than are demand and nominal shocks. In particular, productivity can explain part of the appreciation of the dollar in the late 1990s only to the extent that it created a boost to aggregate demand in the US. We find an insignificant contribution of the Balassa-Samuelson effect.real exchange rate, productivity, VAR, sign restrictions

The competition effect in business cycles : [Version 21 März 2012]

How do changes in market structure affect the US business cycle? We estimate a monetary DSGE model with endogenous rm/product entry and a translog expenditure function by Bayesian methods. The dynamics of net business formation allow us to identify the 'competition effect', by which desired price markups and inflation decrease when entry rises. We find that a 1 percent increase in the number of competitors lowers desired markups by 0.18 percent. Most of the cyclical variability in inflation is driven by markup fluctuations due to sticky prices or exogenous shocks rather than endogenous changes in desired markups

Model misspecification, learning and the exchange rate disconnect puzzle

Rational expectations models fail to explain the disconnect between the exchange rate and macroeconomic fundamentals. In line with survey evidence on the behaviour of foreign exchange traders, we introduce model misspecification and learning into a standard monetary model. Agents use simple forecasting rules based on a restricted information set. They learn about the parameters and performance of different models and can switch between forecasting rules. We compute the implied post-Bretton Woods US dollar-pound sterling exchange rate and show that the excess volatility of the exchange rate return can be reproduced with low values of the learning gain. Both assumptions, misspecification and learning, are necessary to generate this result. However, the implied correlations with the fundamentals are higher than in the data. Including more lags in the model tends to tip the balance of our findings slightly towards rational expectations and away from the learning hypothesisexchange rate, disconnect, misspecification, learning

Firm entry, inflation and the monetary transmission mechanism

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.entry, inflation, monetary transmission, monetary policy, extensive margin

Firm Entry, Inflation and the Monetary Transmission Mechanism

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.entry, inflation, monetary transmission, monetary policy, extensive margin