| Sumario: | This article argues that the inflation dynamics typically associated with the expectations-augmented Phillips curve are significantly influenced by the interaction of staggered contracts as well as by expectations effects. A property of wage and price contracts which has not typically been emphasized in micro-economic analyses, but which is important from the viewpoint of macroeconomics is that contract decisions are staggered, all contract decisions in the economy are not made at the same point in time. While some months are more popular than others for adjusting wage contracts, these adjustment decisions are generally staggered throughout the year. The wage and output dynamics generated by this model share a number of features with the actual behavior of these series and this lends some support to the idea that contract formation as well as expectations is an important part of wage and price dynamics. While these ideas are implicit in much accelerationist research, the aim here has been to make them explicit in order that alternative hypotheses concerning the inflation process can be stated more clearly. The overlapping contract model described in the paper is closely related to a number of other models. While the micro foundations of such models need to be developed more rigorously, they seem capable of improving our understanding of the dynamics of the inflationary process within a reasonable well-specified rational setting.
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