Heterogeneity in Price Rigidity: Evidence from a Case Study Using Microlevel Data (original) (raw)

Price rigidity and price dispersion: evidence from micro data

Review of Economic Dynamics, 2004

We use large unpublished data set about the prices by store of 381 products collected by the Israeli bureau of statistics during 1991-92 in the process of computing the CPI. On average 24% of the stores changed their price where the average is over products and months. Using the standard calculation this would imply that on average prices remain unchanged for 4.1 months. We argue that the standard calculation suffers from a large aggregation bias due to Jensen's inequality and our best estimate suggests that prices remain unchanged on average for more than 7.5 months. We then assess the importance of price rigidity in generating price dispersion. We find no evidence that price rigidity as measured by the frequency of nominal price changes is related to price dispersion. We also find no evidence that a shock to the inflation rate increases price dispersion. These findings are not consistent with standard versions of the staggered price setting model but are roughly consistent with a simple version of the uncertain and sequential trade model.

Price rigidity and flexibility: new empirical evidence

Managerial and Decision Economics, 2007

The marketplace, along with its price system, is the single most important institution in a western-style free enterprise economy. The ability of prices to adjust to changes in supply and demand conditions enables the market to function efficiently and lies behind the magical invisible hand mechanism. To the behaviour of prices and in particular to the ability of prices to adjust to changes in market conditions, therefore, have fundamental implications for many key issues in many areas of both microeconomics as well as macroeconomics. It is, therefore, critical to study and understand whether there are barriers to price adjustments, what are the nature of these barriers, how the barriers lead to price rigidity, what are possible implications of these rigidities, etc. This introductory essay briefly summarizes the fourteen empirical studies of price rigidity that are included in this special issue.

Price Rigidity and Flexibility: New Empirical Evidence - Introduction to the Special Issue

Managerial and Decision Economics, 2007

The marketplace, along with its price system, is the single most important institution in a western‐style free enterprise economy. The ability of prices to adjust to changes in supply and demand conditions enables the market to function efficiently, and that ability lies behind the magical invisible hand mechanism. The behaviour of prices and in particular the ability of prices to adjust to changes in market conditions, therefore, have fundamental implications for many key issues in many areas of both microeconomics as well as macroeconomics. It is, therefore, critical to study and understand whether there are barriers to price adjustments, what are the nature of these barriers, how the barriers lead to price rigidity, what are the possible implications of these rigidities, etc. This introductory essay briefly summarizes the 14 empirical studies of price rigidity that are included in this special issue.

Price rigidity and flexibility: recent theoretical developments

Managerial and Decision Economics, 2007

The price system, the adjustment of prices to changes in market conditions, is the primary mechanism by which markets function and by which the three most basic questions get answered: what to produce, how much to produce and for whom to produce. To the behaviour of price and price system, therefore, have fundamental implications for many key issues in microeconomics and industrial organization, as well as in macroeconomics and monetary economics. In microeconomics, managerial economics, and industrial organization, economists focus on the price system efficiency. In macroeconomics and monetary economics, economists focus on the extent to which nominal prices fail to adjust to changes in market conditions. Nominal price rigidities play particularly important role in modern monetary economics and in the conduct of monetary policy because of their ability to explain short-run monetary non-neutrality. The behaviour of prices, and in particular the extent of their rigidity and flexibility, therefore, is of central importance in economics. This introductory essay briefly summarizes the eight studies of price rigidity that are included in this special issue.

Price Rigidity and Flexibility: Recent Theoretical Developments - Introduction to the Special Issue

Managerial and Decision Economics, 2007

The price system, the adjustment of prices to changes in market conditions, is the primary mechanism by which markets function and by which the three most basic questions get answered: what to produce, how much to produce and for whom to produce. To the behaviour of price and price system, therefore, have fundamental implications for many key issues in microeconomics and industrial organization, as well as in macroeconomics and monetary economics. In microeconomics, managerial economics, and industrial organization, economists focus on the price system efficiency. In macroeconomics and monetary economics, economists focus on the extent to which nominal prices fail to adjust to changes in market conditions. Nominal price rigidities play a particularly important role in modern monetary economics and in the conduct of monetary policy because of their ability to explain short‐run monetary non‐neutrality. The behaviour of prices, and in particular the extent of their rigidity and flexibility, therefore, is of central importance in economics. This introductory essay briefly summarizes the eight studies of price rigidity that are included in this special issue.

Not All Price Endings Are Created Equal: Price Points and Asymmetric Price Rigidity

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2012

We document an asymmetry in the rigidity of 9-ending prices relative to non-9ending prices. Consumers have difficulty noticing higher prices if they are 9-ending, or noticing price-increases if the new prices are 9-ending, because 9-endings are used as a signal for low prices. Price setters respond strategically to the consumer-heuristic by setting 9-ending prices more often after price-increases than after price-decreases. 9-ending prices, therefore, remain 9-ending more often after price-increases than after price-decreases, leading to asymmetric rigidity: 9ending prices are more rigid upward than downward. These findings hold for both transactionprices and regular-prices, and for both inflation and no-inflation periods.

Rigidities and adjustments of daily prices to costs: Evidence from supermarket data

Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control

We assess the extent of inertia in grocery retail prices using data on prices and costs from a large supermarket chain in Colombia. Relative to previous work our analysis benefits from the daily frequency of the data and the availability of reliable replacement cost data. We uncover evidence supporting the existence of significant nominal rigidities in reference prices (three months) and even more so in reference costs (about five months). There is evidence that the price and cost rigidities differ depending on the type of product, being on average smaller in the case of perishable goods. Using an Error Correction Model framework, we examine the path of prices relative to costs, to determine the speed of adjustment of prices to shocks.

Why are some prices stickier than others? Firm-data evidence on price adjustment lags

Infrequent price changes at the …rm level are now well documented in the literature. However, a number of issues remain partly unaddressed. This paper contributes to the literature on price stickiness by investigating the lags of price adjustments to di¤erent types of shocks. We …nd that adjustment lags to cost and demand shocks vary with …rm characteristics, namely the …rm's cost structure, the type of pricing policy, and the type of good. We also document that …rms react asymmetrically to demand and cost shocks, as well as to positive and negative shocks, and that the degree and direction of the asymmetry varies across …rms. JEL classi…cation codes: C41, D40, E31. Niemann and Pedro Portugal for helpful discussions and useful suggestions. The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily coincide with those of Banco de Portugal or the Eurosystem. Any errors and omissions are the sole responsibility of the authors.