Misplaced Pages

Talk:Nominal rigidity

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by ExpertIdeasBot (talk | contribs) at 15:40, 24 June 2016 (ExpertIdeasBot-changing). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 15:40, 24 June 2016 by ExpertIdeasBot (talk | contribs) (ExpertIdeasBot-changing)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
WikiProject iconEconomics Start‑class Mid‑importance
WikiProject iconThis article is within the scope of WikiProject Economics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Economics on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.EconomicsWikipedia:WikiProject EconomicsTemplate:WikiProject EconomicsEconomics
StartThis article has been rated as Start-class on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale.
MidThis article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
High traffic

On 30 May 2010, Nominal rigidity was linked from Slashdot, a high-traffic website. (Traffic)

All prior and subsequent edits to the article are noted in its revision history.

"Jobless recovery"

I guess this is an American economic recovery? If so state that its American! This will lessen confusion. --Albert 19:41, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Good point. Fixed. --David Youngberg 19:04, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Lucas Imperfect info model

Aka "Islands" or "surprise model" is described in its own page -- Lucas-Islands_model . As another important explanation for price stickiness it's probably worth linking to from here. 128.164.16.120 (talk) 01:28, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Taylor and Calvo

This section is still not very useful for the non-specialist. We need some further amplification on the taylor and Calvo models. They should really have their own pages. But in the meantime, why not add something here?Byronmercury (talk) 14:30, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

We could also do with a section on Sticky information. Again, I will do it eventually if no one wants to get started in the meantime (Basically: Stan Fischer's 1977 model, Mankiw and Reis 2002etc..Byronmercury (talk) 13:30, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

had a first go at this: plenty of room for improvement!Byronmercury (talk) 07:22, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the sticky information section. It was definitely needed. The "Evaluation of sticky information models" section seems like it might have original research problems (see WP:OR). It doesn't look like anybody has published the criticism that sticky information models lack nominal price rigidity. Am I missing something? Does one of the sources evaluate sticky information models based on their lack of nominal rigidities?--Bkwillwm (talk) 01:42, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the encouragement. In the evaluation, I was just repeating what I had heard people say. However, you are quite right, the wikipedia guidelines require references. I will take a look at some articles to find a suitable reference and remove the evaluation section if I cannot find one. Byronmercury (talk) 07:07, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
Added references. The Knotec is especially relevant and a really cute title. Thanks for your comment: it got me to read some new papers. Most of the references I first looked at were aimed at criticizing the indexation assumption for being at odds with the micro-data (e.g. Cogley and Sbordonne AER 2008)rather than sticky information models, although of course the argument is exactly the same.Byronmercury (talk) 11:51, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

agree there should be more on Taylor and Calvo: indeed, they should have their own pages. Added a paragraph on each. Sorry, cannot do equations: it would be good to have some of the basic equations.Zosimos102 (talk) 11:33, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

there is now a new Taylor contracts page. It has the maths: am working on Calvo page.Byronmercury (talk) 14:30, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
A Calvo staggered contracts page as well (a start at least!).Byronmercury (talk) 16:03, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Move from "Sticky (economics)" to "Nominal rigidity"

Bender235moved this page from "sticky (economics)" to "nominal rigidity." I'm not completely opposed to this change, but I think it requires some additional work. At the very least, we have to do something with the "sticky information" section since it doesn't belong in a "nominal rigidity" article. I know that "sticky prices" and "nominal rigidities" can be used interchangably, but occasionally there is an important distinction. "Nominal rigidity" is often only used when talking about high-level, aggregated models (AS-AD) while "sticky prices" is more often used when the specific mechanism or model for rigidity is being discussed (menu cost, Calvo pricing). Any ideas how this should be organized. Should we go back to a very general "Sticky (economics)" article? Or maybe have a "Nominal rigidity" that discusses sticky prices and another sticky information article? I'm not sure what the best solution is, but I don't think we can leave the current name/organization as is.--Bkwillwm (talk) 04:30, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Am happy for a separate sticky info page, and would assist in generating some additional material. However, I have heard people say that sticky info is a form of nominal rigidity, in that prices do not respond fully to current market conditions. It is this a form of "partial" nominal rigidity: prices are no fixed, but will not in general vary as much as fully flexible prices would.Byronmercury (talk) 12:25, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Had a bit of a look into this page (history etc). The "stickiness" version was a redirection of an older "nominal rigidity" page, from which I suspect the rather erudite list of "further reading" comes from (the current article shows no sign of being related to the items listed). The article also indicates that "sticky" is used in the social sciences other than economics. I have been able to find absolutely no evidence of this. Take a look at the disambiguation page https://en.wikipedia.org/Sticky. From the general point of view of economics, "stickiness" has only been used in the context of price and wage stickiness (what we call nominal rigidity) and sticky information. There is one exception I have found, which is Mankiw and Reis JEEA 2007, which looks at the implications for Sticky infomation in general equilibrium applied to a range of decision variables (consumption, labor supply etc.) as well as prices. I do not think that Mankiw and Reis 2007 has come into general usage yet. I therefore suggest that we simply treat "sticky prices" as a general alternative term for nominal rigidity and note the exceptions mentioned by Bkwillwm. Byronmercury (talk) 15:51, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Redrafted opening paragraph. I intend to replace the section "examples" which is currently out of place with a short section on "empirical evidence" giving a brief taste of the evidence for nominal rigidity (which again is worth a whole page to itself). Byronmercury (talk) 16:45, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Dr. van Rens's comment on this article

Dr. van Rens has reviewed this Misplaced Pages page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:


"Wages, prices, and employment levels can all be sticky" is confusing. Employment is a quantity. The terms rigidity and stickiness, as discussed in this article, (should) refer to wages and prices only.

"when stickiness enters the system, oscillations in one direction are favored over the other". This is true only for asymmetric rigidity, e.g. downward nominal wage rigidity. Rigidity may be symmetric as well, in the sense that it limits movements of the price in upward and downward directions in the same manner. In fact, price rigidity in most macroeconomic models, e.g. the standard new Keynesian model, is symmetric (Calvo price stickiness).

"In time-dependent models, firms decide to change prices and then evaluate market conditions; In state-dependent models, firms evaluate market conditions and then decide how to respond." This is not wrong, but refers to a narrow category of sticky price models, in which rigidity takes the form that prices are fixed until something happens. There are alternatively models of rigidity, in which prices move continuously, but not as much as under flexible prices.

For sticky information, a very important reference, which is not discussed in the article, is: Bartosz Mackowiak & Mirko Wiederholt, 2009. "Optimal Sticky Prices under Rational Inattention," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 769-803, June.

The article is almost entirely about sticky prices. There are several large strands of literature on sticky wages, which could roughly be separated into downward nominal wage rigidity, (symmetric) wage rigidity, and real wage rigidity. A (non-comprehensive) list of important references (both theoretical and empirical) on real wage rigidity includes: Barro, Robert J. (1977). Long-Term Contracting, Sticky Prices, and Monetary Policy. Journal of Monetary Economics, 3(3) Beaudry, Paul and John DiNardo (1991). The Effect of Implicit Contracts on the Movement of Wages over the Business Cycle: Evidence from Micro Data, Journal of Political Economy, 99(4), pp.665-688 Bils, Mark J. (1985). Real Wages Over the Business Cycle: Evidence From Panel Data, Journal of Political Economy, 93(4), pp.666–689 Carneiro, Anabela, Paulo Guimarães and Pedro Portugal (2012). Real Wages and the Business Cycle: Accounting for Worker and Firm Heterogeneity, American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 4(2), pp.133-152 Hall, Robert E. (2005). Employment Fluctuations with Equilibrium Wage Stickiness, American Economic Review, 95(1), pp.50-65 Pissarides, Christopher A. (2009). The Unemployment Volatility Puzzle: Is Wage Stickiness the Answer? The Walras-Bowley lecture, North American Summer Meetings of the Econometric Society, Econometrica, 77, pp.1339-1369

Haefke, C., M. Sonntag, and T. van Rens (2013). Wage rigidity and job creation. Journal of Monetary Economics 60 (8), 887ñ899


We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

Dr. van Rens has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Misplaced Pages article:


  • Reference : Benedikt Herz and Thijs van Rens, 2011. "Structural Unemployment," Working Papers 568, Barcelona Graduate School of Economics.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 11:04, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Dr. Blanchard's comment on this article

Dr. Blanchard has reviewed this Misplaced Pages page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:


The section ``Examples of stickiness needs work. Some of the examples are not of nominal stickiness, but real stickiness. The first paragraph in particular, which refers to employment stickiness, and ratchet effects, needs thorough rewriting.


We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

Dr. Blanchard has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Misplaced Pages article:


  • Reference 1: Blanchard, Olivier J & Gali, Jordi, 2008. "Labour Markets and Monetary Policy: A New Keynesian Model with Unemployment," CEPR Discussion Papers 6765, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  • Reference 2: Blanchard, Olivier J & Gali, Jordi, 2008. "The Macroeconomic Effects of Oil Shocks: Why are the 2000s so Different from the 1970s?," CEPR Discussion Papers 6631, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 15:40, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Categories: