domingo, 17 de mayo de 2009

Un train a Londres

Antes que se me derrita lo que me queda de aparato psíquico, me tome unos días y me vine a la mágica Londres. Sus parques, sus calles, sus edificios, merecen ser vistos. Pero para un freak como yo amante del rock Británico, del fútbol dinámico matematicamente impredecible, de la revolución industrial (donde todavía se puede sentir el olor a carbón), de los pubs con luz tenue, de los mercados de chucherías, de las majestuosas librerías, de la estética medieval...Londres es el génesis. Es una ciudad única que siempre nos recuerda a esa persona maravillosa que supimos perder. Y precisamente por eso, porque es una ciudad que se mueve en un tiempo distinto, cada sentimiento y suceso del pasado (y todo aquel suceso futuro) coexisten en la unicidad del tiempo presente. Mientras me iba a la British Library, sin querer pase por la casa de Carlos y saque una foto:

miércoles, 13 de mayo de 2009

Ortodoxo, hasta el tuetano.

El PRO (pro-Mauricio) dice que el ABL subira donde haya mejoras de insfrastructura publica. Un modelito simple avalaria la politica publica: un solo sector que se beneficia con gasto publico (productivo) y por ende aumenta el valor de la productividad marginal del capital, dicho excedente puede ser quitado atraves de un impuesto de suma fija. Pero entonces, para que hacemos las cosas si terminamos como al comienzo??? Ohh damn!

martes, 12 de mayo de 2009

Cada sistema tiene su propia lógica.

Por un momento recordé uno de los instantes mas hermosos de mi vida. Fue hace unos años, y se daba particularmente entre el trayecto de vuelta de la facultad de Filosofía y Letras de Púan y mi casa. No había mejor momento que volver en colectivo esos Viernes a la noche después de una buena clase de Filosofía Medieval. La sensacion de dejar que el cansancio haga lo suyo, mientras uno se desliza en el duro asiento del 55 y en las palabras de San Agustín; con el mayor placer de saber que uno cenara una carne asada y un Tofi blanco de postre. En esos momentos, había llegado al cielo.
Casas nos ilustra en este post sobre el concepto de felicidad en Borges, quien notablemente dijo: "he cometido uno de los peores pecados que un hombre puede cometer, no he sido feliz". Nos resultara difícil entender que el gran maestro amo tanto al Quijote como a una despampanante pelirroja, pero así parece ser la historia:
En el comienzo del Aleph, la mañana en que muere Beatriz Viterbo está fechada en febrero de 1929, el mismo mes y año en que Norah lo rechazó. Borges sufría pero estaba escribiendo como los dioses. Convertía su dolor en aventura. Así que en ese candente instante en que una de las chicas Lange dijo “este sí, este no”, nosotros tuvimos al Borges que nos rompió la cabeza.
Un nuevo caso empírico que avala nuestra ya expuesta teoría.

Primeros borradores (hechos publicos!)

Nominal price rigidities approach works on the idea that wages and prices are sticky. Individual wages and prices respond slowly to changes in aggregate demand. This effect translates to aggregate price level where both wages and prices adjust slowly. During the process of adjustment, output if affected by the change in demand.
The big question is not proof whether nominal rigidity exists or not. The point is to understand the possible sources of nominal wage rigidity that leads to price stickiness.
Fischer (1977) and Taylor (1980) propose a model where firms and workers sign a contract wage period. Because wages are fixed within a period and cannot adjust, nominal shocks have real effects. The important message here is that temporary nominal rigidity can have a disproportionate effect on response of aggregate price level to change in aggregate demand; the effect of the shock vanishes gradually while individuals readjust wages to the new level. This approach can be characterized by an institutional framework: the source of nominal rigidity is that there exists a fix contract duration. Even thought the theoretical contributions were important, these models were severely criticized. The existence of contacts is never microfounded, as Mankiw (1990) holds: “if the nominal wage contracts are responsible for large and inefficient fluctuations in output and employment, why do workers and firms write these contracts?”
Dissatisfaction with models emphasizing the stickiness of nominal wages, the attention turned to a new source of nominal rigidity. The idea was to assume the existence of monopoly firms who face small “menu costs” when they change prices. To illustrate our point, consider Blanchard and Kiyotaki’s (1987) classical menu cost model. Here, firms incur a fixed real cost when they change nominal prices. If this fixed cost is above a certain threshold, firms have no incentive to change their prices and nominal shocks may have real effects. Hence, in the menu cost view, a firm’s price setting decision - and hence the question whether nominal shocks can have real effects – fundamentally depends on the presence of a real cost to nominal price changes. These menu costs are the resources required to post new price lists and more metaphorical: the costumer annoyance by prices changes and the effort required to think about a price change. The advantage of these types of models is that they can explain in microeconomic terms why prices do not restore to equilibrium. A typical monopoly may have not so much incentives to adjust the price because his optimization problem, given the menu cost, indicates that the optimal action is to leave prices unchanged.
The Fischer and Taylor models assume that the timing of price changes is determined by the passage of time (notice that Blanchard and Kiyotaki model is static, and this may be considered a flaw). However, many retail stores, for example, can adjust the timing of their price in response to economic environment. Caplin and Spulber (1987) present a model where the number of price setters changing their prices at any moment of time is larger when money supply is increasing rapidly. In the aggregate, because price level may respond fully to changes in money, nominal shocks may have or not real effects. This will depend, like in the other models, on the source of rigidity. However, the novelty here is that the source of nominal rigidity is endogenous determined and may be variant though out time. A price setter keeps nominal price fixed until the difference between his ideal price and actual price equals a target level. If the ideal has passed the trigger level, he resets the price.
New emerging literature in nominal rigidities has started to consider a new possible source of nominal wage rigidity based of social norms. Truman Bewley (1999) presents evidence that wage stickiness can be explained by social norms. He concludes that, even through substitute labor is available, employers are reluctant to cut wages because of the negative effects of cuts on morale (that later on affects productivity). In this context, it might be optimal for firms not to cut wages. Elsby (2009) models Bewley’s idea to show how downward nominal wage rigidity actually exists and what are the implications for the real economy.
In a similar line, Akerloff (2007) does not present a theoretical framework, but in the context of price setting he suggests the following: “Norms regarding price changes, however, give an alternative reason why these costs might be—indeed—of sufficient size to induce a significant long-run trade-off between inflation and unemployment”. It is possible to think that Akerloff is considering to translate the source of nominal wage rigidity into consumers, and this source would be based in some kind of social normal... (will continue)
By Alex de Large.

lunes, 4 de mayo de 2009

Aguantar los trapos

Eso es ser hincha de Boca.

(unlike the chickens, wouldn´t you say, Alex?)