Beveridgean Phillips Curve

This paper builds a Beveridgean model of the Phillips curve. Prices respond to slack so the divine coincidence holds: prices are stable at full employment. The Phillips curve is kinked if wage cuts are more costly to producers than price hikes.

October 2024 · Pascal Michaillat, Emmanuel Saez

u* = √uv: The Full-Employment Rate of Unemployment in the United States

This paper argues that in the United States the full-employment rate of unemployment (FERU) is the geometric average of the unemployment and vacancy rates. Between 1930 and 2024, the FERU averages 4.1% and is very stable.

September 2024 · Pascal Michaillat, Emmanuel Saez

Economic Slack

This graduate course presents various matching models of economic slack. It uses them to study business-cycle fluctuations; Keynesian, classical, and frictional unemployment; optimal monetary policy and the zero lower bound; and optimal government spending.

January 2024 · Pascal Michaillat

Business Cycles and How to Tame Them

This minicourse presents basic facts about business cycles. It then develops a matching model to explain these business-cycle facts. Finally, it explains how monetary policy and government spending should be designed to tame business cycles.

December 2023 · Pascal Michaillat

An Economical Business-Cycle Model

This paper develops a policy-oriented business-cycle model with fluctuating unemployment and long zero-lower-bound episodes. The innovations are that producers and consumers meet through a matching function, and wealth enters the utility function.

April 2022 · Pascal Michaillat, Emmanuel Saez

Pricing under Fairness Concerns

This paper develops a model of pricing in which buyers care about the fairness of markups but misinfer them from prices. The model yields price rigidity, generates realistic Phillips curves, and explains why people dislike inflation so much.

June 2021 · Erik Eyster, Kristof Madarasz, Pascal Michaillat

Resolving New Keynesian Anomalies with Wealth in the Utility Function

This paper resolves the anomalies of the New Keynesian model at the zero lower bound—explosive recession, forward-guidance puzzle, multiplier puzzle—by introducing wealth into the utility function.

May 2021 · Pascal Michaillat, Emmanuel Saez