Monetary policy and the relative price of durable goods

In a Structural Vector-Autoregressive model of the US, the response of the relative price of durables to a monetary policy contraction is either flat or mildly positive. It significantly falls only if narrowly defined as the ratio between new-house and nondurables prices. These findings are rationalized via the estimation of two-sector New-Keynesian (NK) models. Durables prices are estimated to be as sticky as those of nondurables, leading to a flat relative price response to a monetary policy shock. Conversely, house prices are estimated to be almost flexible. Such results survive several robustness checks and a three-sector extension of the NK model. These findings have implications for building NK models with durable and nondurable goods, and for the conduct of monetary policy.