Faculty and Research

© Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2009
Volume: 125 | Issue: 3 | Pages: 961-1013

Publication type: Journal article

Research Archive Topic: Corporate Finance

Abstract

Empirical evidence suggests that as much as 1/3 of the U.S. business cycle is due to nominal shocks. We calibrate a multi-sector menu cost model using new evidence on the cross-sectional distribution of the frequency and size of price changes in the U.S. economy. We augment the model to incorporate intermediate inputs. We show that the introduction of heterogeneity in the frequency of price change triples the degree of monetary non-neutrality generated by the model. We furthermore show that the introduction of intermediate inputs raises the degree of monetary non-neutrality by another factor of three, without adversely affecting the model's ability to match the large average size of price changes. A single-sector model with a frequency of price change equal to the median, rather than the mean, generates similar monetary non-neutrality to our multi-sector model. Our multi-sector model with intermediate inputs generates variation in real output in response to calibrated aggregate nominal shocks that can account for roughly 23% of the U.S. business cycle.

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