Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Keynesians

Aggregate Demand, Aggregate Supply, and What We Know (Wonkish) by Krugman
Still, we try. New Keynesians do stuff like one-period-ahead price setting or Calvo pricing, in which prices are revised randomly. Practicing Keynesians have tended to rely on “accelerationist” Phillips curves in which unemployment determined the rate of change rather than the level of inflation. 
So what has happened since 2008 is that both of these approaches have been found wanting: inflation has dropped, but stayed positive despite high unemployment. What the data actually look like is an old-fashioned non-expectations Phillips curve. And there are a couple of popular stories about why: downward wage rigidity even in the long run, anchored expectations. 
The point, however, is that the price-setting side of the models has never been an integral part of Keynesian doctrine, and the surprising resilience of inflation hasn’t undermined the core insights. 
And it remains true that Keynesians have been hugely right on the effects of monetary and fiscal policy, while equilibrium macro types have been wrong about everything.

And Robert Waldmann's Fox News inflation-distortion bubble which isn't exactly anchored expectations. It boosts expected inflation rates.

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