NBER Publications by Benjamin Malin

A standard state-dependent pricing model generates little monetary non-neutrality. Two ways of generating more meaningful real effects are time-dependent pricing and strategic complementarities. These mechanisms have telltale implications for the persistence and volatility of "reset price inflation." Reset price inflation is the rate of change of all desired prices (including for goods that have not changed price in the current period). Using the micro data underpinning the CPI, we construct an empirical measure of reset price inflation. We find that time-dependent models imply unrealistically high persistence and stability of reset price inflation. This discrepancy is exacerbated by adding strategic complementarities, even under state-dependent pricing. A state-dependent model with no str...

We describe a sparse grid collocation algorithm to compute recursive solutions of dynamic economies with a sizable number of state variables. We show how powerful this method may be in applications by computing the nonlinear recursive solution of an international real business cycle model with a substantial number of countries, complete insurance markets and frictions that impede frictionless international capital flows. In this economy the aggregate state vector includes the distribution of world capital across different countries as well as the exogenous country-specific technology shocks. We use the algorithm to efficiently solve models with 2, 4, and 6 countries (i.e., up to 12 continuous state variables).

We describe a sparse grid collocation algorithm to compute recursive solutions of dynamic economies with a sizable number of state variables. We show how powerful this method may be in applications by computing the nonlinear recursive solution of an international real business cycle model with a substantial number of countries, complete insurance markets and frictions that impede frictionless international capital flows. In this economy the aggregate state vector includes the distribution of world capital across different countries as well as the exogenous country-specific technology shocks. We use the algorithm to efficiently solve models with 2, 4, and 6 countries (i.e., up to 12 continuous state variables).