A business-cycle model with monopolistically competitive firms and Calvo wages: lessons for Bulgaria (1999–2018)

Purpose The author augments an otherwise standard business-cycle model with a rich government sector and adds monopolistic competition in the product market and rigid prices, as well as rigid wages a la Calvo (1983) in the labor market. Design/methodology/approach This specification with the nominal wage rigidity, when calibrated to Bulgarian data after the introduction of the currency board (1999–2018), allows the framework to reproduce better observed variability and correlations among model variables and those characterizing the labor market in particular. Findings As nominal wage frictions are incorporated, the variables become more persistent, especially output, capital stock, investment and consumption, which help the model match data better, as compared to a setup without rigidities. Originality/value The computational experiments performed in this paper suggest that wage rigidities are a quantitatively important model ingredient, which should be taken into consideration when analyzing the effects of different policies in Bulgaria, which is a novel result.