We address how using different censoring thresholds and imputation procedures affects the baseline results of Coibion, Gorodnichenko, and Hong (2015). Higher censoring thresholds introduce measure ment error and outliers that generate wide variability in results across weighting schemes, but methods that explicitly control for outliers confirm the results of Coibion, Gorodnichenko, and Hong (2015) for all censoring thresholds. We also illustrate how the BLS’s approach to imputing missing prices can introduce a cyclical bias into measures of posted price inflation when store-switching is present in the data. (JEL D12, E31, E32, L25, L81)

We study the cyclical properties of sales, regular price changes, and average prices paid by consumers (“effective” prices) using data on prices and quantities sold for numerous retailers across many US metropolitan areas. Inflation in the effective prices paid by consumers declines significantly with higher unemployment while little change occurs in the inflation rate of prices posted by retailers. This difference reflects the reallocation of household expenditures across retailers, a feature of the data which we document and quantify, rather than sales. We propose a simple model with household store-switching and assess its implications for business cycles and policymakers. (JEL D12, E31, E32, L25, L81)

We argue that a more individualist culture leads to more innovation and to higher growth because of the social status rewards associated with innovation in that culture. We use data on the frequency of particular genes associated with collectivist cultures, as well as a measure of distance in terms of frequencies of blood types, and historic prevalence of pathogens to instrument individualism scores. The relationship between individualism and innovation/growth remains strong even after controlling for institutions and other potentially confounding factors. We also provide evidence consistent with two-way causality between culture and institutions.

We document basic facts about prices in online markets in the U.S. and Canada, a rapidly growing segment of the retail sector. Relative to prices in regular stores, prices in online markets are more flexible as well as exhibit stronger pass-through (60-75 percent) and faster convergence (half-life less than 2 months) in response to movements of the nominal exchange rate. Multiple margins of adjustment (frequency of price changes, direction of price changes, size of price changes, exit of sellers) are active in the process of responding to nominal exchange rate shocks. Furthermore, we use the richness of our dataset to show that degree of competition, stickiness of prices, synchronization of price changes, reputation of sellers, and returns to search effort are important determinants of pass-through and speed of price adjustment for international price differentials.

We show that after monetary policy announcements, the conditional volatility of stock market returns rises more for firms with stickier prices than for firms with more flexible prices. This differential reaction is economically large and strikingly robust to a broad array of checks. These results suggest that menu costs—broadly defined to include physical costs of price adjustment, informational frictions, etc.—are an important factor for nominal price rigidity at the micro level. We also show that our empirical results are qualitatively and, under plausible calibrations, quantitatively consistent with New Keynesian macroeconomic models in which firms have heterogeneous price stickiness. (JEL E12, E31, E43, E44, E52, G12, L11)

Why did Finland experience, in 1991–1993, the deepest recession observed in an industrialized country since the 1930s? Using a dynamic general equilibrium model with labor frictions, we argue that the collapse of the Soviet-Finnish trade was a major contributor to the contraction. Finland's experience mirrors that of the transition economies of Eastern Europe, which suffered similar deep recessions coupled with institutional changes. By focusing on the Finnish case, we isolate the effects of the Finnish-Soviet trade collapse and shed new light on the sources of recessions in transition economies.

We present empirical evidence that, among a variety of cultural dimensions, the individualism-collectivism dimension, based on Hofstede's (2001) data, is the most important and robustly significant effect of culture on long run growth. Other dimensions that have a significant effect, albeit less robust, are generally strongly correlated with individualism and convey similar information. We found no significant or robust effect on growth from cultural dimensions that are independent from the individualism-collectivism cleavage.

We examine the effects of Russia’s 2001 flat rate income tax reform on consumption, income, and tax evasion. We use the gap between household expenditures and reported earnings as a proxy for tax evasion with data from a household panel for 1998–2004. We associate large and significant changes in tax evasion following the flat tax reform with changes in voluntary compliance. We develop a consumption‐based framework to assess the deadweight loss from income tax in the presence of tax evasion and show that the efficiency gains from the reform are at least 30 percent smaller than the gains implied by conventional approaches.

Abstract We exploit a panel of city-level data with rich demographic information to estimate the distributional effects of Department of Defense spending and its effects on a range of social outcomes. The income and employment generated by defence spending accrue predominantly to households without a bachelor's degree. These households as well as Black and Hispanic households tend to disproportionately benefit from this spending. Defence spending also promotes a range of beneficial social outcomes that are often targeted by government programs, including reductions in poverty, divorce rates, disability rates, and mortality rates, as well as increases in homeownership rates, health insurance rates, and occupational prestige. We compare the effects of defence spending with the effects of general demand shocks and explore reasons for the differential effects of the shocks.

We study the role of preferred habitat in understanding the economic effects of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing (QE). Using high-frequency identification and exploiting the structure of the primary market for US Treasuries, we isolate demand shocks that are transmitted solely through preferred habitat channels but otherwise mimic QE shocks. We document large localized yield curve effects when financial markets are disrupted. Our calibrated model, which embeds preferred habitat in a New Keynesian framework, can largely account for the observed financial effects of QE. QE is modestly stimulative for output and inflation, but alternative policy designs can generate stronger effects.