Working Paper No. 408
By Renato Faccini, Stephen Millard and Francesco Zanetti
We estimate a New Keynesian model with matching frictions and nominal wage rigidities on UK data. We are able to identify important structural parameters, recover the unobservable shocks that have affected the UK economy since 1971 and study the transmission mechanism. With matching frictions, wage rigidities have limited effect on inflation dynamics, despite improving the empirical performance of the model. The reason is that with matching frictions, marginal costs depend on unit labour costs and on an additional component related to search costs. Wage rigidities affect both components in opposite ways leaving marginal costs and inflation virtually unaffected.
Wage rigidities in an estimated DSGE model of the UK labour market