Lumpy price adjustments: a microeconometric analysis

This paper presents a simple model of state-dependent pricing that allows identifying the relative importance of both nominal and real factors in price rigidity. Using two rich datasets consisting of a large fraction of the price quotes used to compute the Belgian and French Consumer Price Indices, we are able to evaluate, the importance of the menu costs and to discriminate between idiosyncratic and common shocks that affect the marginal cost and/or the desired mark-up at the outlet level. We find that infrequent price changes are not necessarily associated with large menu costs. Indeed, real... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Dhyne, Emmanuel
Fuss, Catherine
Pesaran, Hashem
Sevestre, Patrick
Dokumenttyp: doc-type:workingPaper
Erscheinungsdatum: 2006
Verlag/Hrsg.: Brussels: National Bank of Belgium
Schlagwörter: ddc:330 / C51 / C81 / D21 / Sticky prices / menu costs / nominal and real rigidities / micro panels / Preisrigidität / Preis / Anpassung / Verbraucherpreisindex / Schätzung / Belgien / Frankreich
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-28897213
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : http://hdl.handle.net/10419/144314

This paper presents a simple model of state-dependent pricing that allows identifying the relative importance of both nominal and real factors in price rigidity. Using two rich datasets consisting of a large fraction of the price quotes used to compute the Belgian and French Consumer Price Indices, we are able to evaluate, the importance of the menu costs and to discriminate between idiosyncratic and common shocks that affect the marginal cost and/or the desired mark-up at the outlet level. We find that infrequent price changes are not necessarily associated with large menu costs. Indeed, real rigidities appear to play a significant role. We also find that asymmetry in the price adjustment may result from a trend in marginal costs and/or desired mark-ups rather than from asymmetric menu costs