IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v100y2008i1p101-104.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Aggregate demand shocks, private signals and employment variability: Can better information be harmful?

Author

Listed:
  • James, Jonathan G.
  • Lawler, Phillip

Abstract

The consequences of private information concerning the realization of aggregate demand shocks are investigated in the context of a standard macroeconomic model. It is found that an improvement in information quality can be damaging, in the sense of amplifying employment fluctuations. The source of this result is an externality arising from individual firm wage decisions, which leads to a collective over-reaction to private information.

Suggested Citation

  • James, Jonathan G. & Lawler, Phillip, 2008. "Aggregate demand shocks, private signals and employment variability: Can better information be harmful?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 100(1), pages 101-104, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:100:y:2008:i:1:p:101-104
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165-1765(07)00418-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James, Jonathan G. & Lawler, Phillip, 2007. "Supply shocks, private sector information and monetary policy: Is there inevitably a stabilization trade-off?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 77-83, July.
    2. Lawler, Phillip, 2002. "Monetary uncertainty, strategic wage setting and equilibrium employment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 35-40, September.
    3. Russell Cooper & Andrew John, 1988. "Coordinating Coordination Failures in Keynesian Models," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 103(3), pages 441-463.
    4. Devereux, Michael, 1987. "The effect of monetary variability on welfare in a simple macroeconomic model," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 427-435, May.
    5. Cukierman, Alex & Meltzer, Allan H, 1986. "A Theory of Ambiguity, Credibility, and Inflation under Discretion and Asymmetric Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(5), pages 1099-1128, September.
    6. Douglas Gollin, 2002. "Getting Income Shares Right," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(2), pages 458-474, April.
    7. James, Jonathan G. & Lawler, Phillip, 2006. "Might a conservative central banker reduce employment variability?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 93(3), pages 367-373, December.
    8. Stephen Morris & Hyun Song Shin, 2002. "Social Value of Public Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1521-1534, December.
    9. Laurence Ball, 1988. "Is Equilibrium Indexation Efficient?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 103(2), pages 299-311.
    10. Pearce, Douglas K. & Sobue, Motoshi, 1997. "Uncertainty and the inflation bias of monetary policy," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 57(2), pages 203-207, December.
    11. Fischer, Stanley, 1977. "Long-Term Contracts, Rational Expectations, and the Optimal Money Supply Rule," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(1), pages 191-205, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. James, Jonathan G. & Lawler, Phillip, 2009. "Aggregate demand shocks, central bank preferences and macroeconomic outcomes with imperfect information," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 105(3), pages 208-210, December.
    2. Jin Yeub Kim & Myungkyu Shim, 2022. "Information Inequality and the Role of Public Information," Korean Economic Review, Korean Economic Association, vol. 38, pages 207-230.
    3. James, Jonathan G. & Lawler, Phillip, 2012. "Heterogeneous information quality; strategic complementarities and optimal policy design," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 83(3), pages 342-352.
    4. Meixing Dai & Moïse Sidiropoulos, 2017. "How multiplicative uncertainty affects the tradeoff between information disclosure and stabilisation policy?," Working Papers of BETA 2017-15, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    5. Jonathan G. James & Phillip Lawler, 2012. "Strategic Complementarity, Stabilization Policy, and the Optimal Degree of Publicity," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 44(4), pages 551-572, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Phillip Lawler & Jonathan James, 2005. "Macroeconomic Shocks and Central Bank Disclosure Policy: Is increased Transparency Necessarily Beneficial?," Money Macro and Finance (MMF) Research Group Conference 2005 27, Money Macro and Finance Research Group.
    2. Rotondi, Zeno, 2000. "Time consistent monetary policy reconsidered: may we have a deflationary bias too?," Discussion Paper Series In Economics And Econometrics 0004, Economics Division, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton.
    3. George-Marios Angeletos & Alessandro Pavan, 2005. "Efficiency and Welfare with Complementarities and Asymmetric Information," NBER Working Papers 11826, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Meixing Dai & Moïse Sidiropoulos, 2017. "How multiplicative uncertainty affects the tradeoff between information disclosure and stabilisation policy?," Working Papers of BETA 2017-15, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    5. Svetlana Makarova, 2018. "European Central Bank Footprints On Inflation Forecast Uncertainty," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(1), pages 637-652, January.
    6. George-Marios Angeletos & Alessandro Pavan, 2004. "Transparency of Information and Coordination in Economies with Investment Complementarities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 91-98, May.
    7. repec:zbw:bofrdp:1999_014 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Angeletos, G.-M. & Lian, C., 2016. "Incomplete Information in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1065-1240, Elsevier.
    9. Frank Heinemann, 2003. "The Inflationary Impact of Wage Indexation," CESifo Working Paper Series 867, CESifo.
    10. Sénégas, Marc-Alexandre & Vilmunen, Jouko, 1999. "The effects of transmission uncertainty on the flexibility-credibility tradeoff in monetary policy," Research Discussion Papers 14/1999, Bank of Finland.
    11. James, Jonathan G. & Lawler, Phillip, 2010. "Macroeconomic shocks, unionized labour markets and central bank disclosure policy: How beneficial is increased transparency?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 506-516, December.
    12. Lau, Sau-Him Paul, 2001. "Aggregate Pattern of Time-dependent Adjustment Rules, II: Strategic Complementarity and Endogenous Nonsynchronization," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 98(2), pages 199-231, June.
    13. Jonathan G James & Phillip Lawler, 2017. "Optimal Transparency and Policy Intervention with Heterogeneous Signals and Information Stickiness," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 85(5), pages 577-600, September.
    14. Marcello Basili & Stefano Dalle Mura, 2004. "Ambiguity and macroeconomics:a rationale for price stickiness," Department of Economics University of Siena 428, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    15. Camille Cornand & Frank Heinemann, 2015. "Macro-expérimentation autour des fonctions des banques centrales," Revue française d'économie, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 0(2), pages 3-47.
    16. Antonio Cabrales & Michalis Drouvelis & Zeynep Gurguy & Indrajit Ray, 2017. "Transparency is Overrated: Communicating in a Coordination Game with Private Information," CESifo Working Paper Series 6781, CESifo.
    17. James, Jonathan G. & Lawler, Phillip, 2010. "Union objectives and indexation externalities in a monopolistically competitive economy," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 28-35, March.
    18. Boschen, John F. & Weise, Charles L., 2004. "Does the dynamic time consistency model of inflation explain cross-country differences in inflations dynamics?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(5), pages 735-759, September.
    19. Issing Otmar & Wieland Volker, 2013. "Monetary Theory and Monetary Policy: Reflections on the Development over the last 150 Years," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 233(3), pages 423-445, June.
    20. Thomas Lustenberger & Enzo Rossi, 2020. "Does Central Bank Transparency and Communication Affect Financial and Macroeconomic Forecasts?," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 16(2), pages 153-201, March.
    21. Schellekens, Philip, 2000. "Caution and conservatism in the making of monetary policy," Working Paper Series 0025, European Central Bank.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:100:y:2008:i:1:p:101-104. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.