Income dispersion and counter-cyclical markups

Chris Edmond and Laura Veldkamp

Journal of Monetary Economics, 2009, vol. 56, issue 6, 791-804

Abstract: Recent advances in measuring cyclical changes in the income distribution raise new questions: How might these distributional changes affect the business cycle itself? We show how counter-cyclical income dispersion can generate counter-cyclical markups in the goods market, without any preference shocks or price-setting frictions. In recessions, idiosyncratic labor productivity shocks raise income dispersion, lower the price elasticity of demand, and increase imperfectly competitive firms' optimal markups. The calibrated model explains not only many cyclical features of markups, but also cyclical and long-run patterns of standard business cycle aggregates.

Keywords: Business; cycles; Markups; Income; dispersion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304-3932(09)00080-4
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Income Dispersion and Counter-Cyclical Markups (2008)
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:moneco:v:56:y:2009:i:6:p:791-804

Access Statistics for this article

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

More articles in Journal of Monetary Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().