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Nominal rigidity, also known as price-stickiness or wage-stickiness, describes a situation in which the nominal price is resistant to change. Complete nominal rigidity occurs when a price is fixed in nominal terms for a relevant period of time. For example, the price of a particular good might be fixed at $10 per unit for a year. Partial nominal rigidity occurs when a price may vary in nominal terms, but not as much as it would if perfectly flexible. For example, in a regulated market there might be limits to how much a price can change in a given year. If we look at the whole economy, some prices might be very flexible and others rigid. This will lead to the aggregate price level (which we can think of as an average of the individual prices) becoming "sluggish" or "sticky" in the sense that it does not respond to macroeconomic shocks as much as it would if all prices were flexible. The same idea can apply to nominal wages. The presence of nominal rigidity is an important part of macroeconomic theory since it can explain why markets might not reach equilibrium in the short run or even possibly the long-run. In his The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, John Maynard Keynes argued that nominal wages display downward rigidity, in the sense that workers are reluctant to accept cuts in nominal wages. This can lead to involuntary unemployment as it takes time for wages to adjust to equilibrium, a situation he thought applied to the Great Depression that he sought to understand. ==Examples of stickiness== Many firms, during recessions, lay off workers. Yet many of these same firms are reluctant to begin hiring, even as the economic situation improves. This can result in slow job growth during a recovery. Wages, prices, and employment levels can all be sticky. Normally, a variable oscillates according to changing market conditions, but when stickiness enters the system, oscillations in one direction are favored over the other, and the variable exhibits "creep"—it gradually moves in one direction or another. This is also called the "ratchet effect". Over time a variable will have ratcheted in one direction. For example, in the absence of competition, firms rarely lower prices, even when production costs decrease (i.e. supply increases) or demand drops. Instead, when production becomes cheaper, firms take the difference as profit, and when demand decreases they are more likely to hold prices constant, while cutting production, than to lower them. Therefore, prices are sometimes observed to be ''sticky downward'', and the net result is one kind of inflation. Prices in an oligopoly can often be considered sticky-upward. The kinked demand curve, resulting in elastic price elasticity of demand above the current market clearing price, and inelasticity below it, requires firms to match price reductions by their competitors to maintain market share. Stickiness in prices, wages, and interest rates can also be brought about by kinks in the indifference curves based on the endowment effect.〔http://www.voxeu.org/article/sticky-prices-and-behavioural-indifference-curves〕 〔John Komlos, What Every Economics Student Needs to Know and Doesn’t Get in the Usual Principles Text (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2014), p. 37.〕 ''Note: For a general discussion of asymmetric upward- and downward-stickiness with respect to upstream prices see Asymmetric price transmission.'' 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Nominal rigidity」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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