What do technology shocks tell us about the New Keynesian paradigm?

Bill Dupor, Jing Han and Tsai, Yi-Chan

Journal of Monetary Economics, 2009, vol. 56, issue 4, pages 560-569

Abstract: Researchers have used unanticipated changes to monetary policy to identify preference and technology parameters of macroeconomic models. This paper uses changes in technology to identify the same set of parameters. Estimates based on technology shocks differ substantially from those based on monetary policy shocks. In the post-World War II United States, a positive technology shock reduces inflation and increases hours worked, significantly and rapidly in both cases. Relative to policy shock identification, technology shock identification implies: (i) long duration durability in preferences instead of short duration habit, (ii) built-in inflation inertia disappears and price flexibility increases. In response to technological improvement, consumption durability increases hours worked because households temporarily increase labor supply to accumulate durables towards a new, higher steady state level. Limited nominal rigidities allow inflation to fall because firms are able to immediately cut prices when households' labor supply increases. Finally, we consider alternative data constructions and econometric specifications; we find that (i) and/or (ii) hold in nearly every case.

Keywords: Technology; shocks; Structural; vector; autoregression; New; Keynesian; paradigm (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VBW ... cdf066d879d1c7fe61f0
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:moneco:v:56:y:2009:i:4:p:560-569

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Monetary Economics is edited by R. G. King and C. I. Plosser

More articles in Journal of Monetary Economics from Elsevier
Series data maintained by Heidi Boesdal ().