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This paper adopts the impulse-response methodology to understand inflation persistence. It has often been argued that existing models of pricing fail to explain the persistence that we observe. We adopt a common general framework that allows for an explicit modeling of the distribution of contract lengths and for different types of price setting. We also evaluate how far the theories are consistent with recent evidence on price and wage rigidity. We find that allowing for a distribution of durations can take us a long way to solving the puzzle of inflation persistence, but not all the way yet. Copyright (c) 2010 The Ohio State University.

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In a recent paper, Michael Kiley argued that the Calvo model of price adjustment is both quantitatively and qualitatively different from the Taylor model. What we show is that Kiley (along with most other people) are choosing the wrong parameterization to compare the two models. In effect they are comparing the average age of Calvo contracts with the completed length of Taylor contracts. When we compare the average age of Taylor contracts with the average of Calvo, the differences become much smaller and easier to understand. We also show that autocorrelation of output can be larger in a Taylor economy than in the age-equivalent Calvo economy.

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