[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/16760.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Distribution of the Size of Price Changes

Author

Listed:
  • Alberto Cavallo
  • Roberto Rigobon
Abstract
Different theories of price stickiness have distinct implications on the number of modes in the distribution of price changes. We formally test for the number of modes in the price change distribution of 36 supermarkets, spanning 22 countries and 5 continents. We present results for three modality tests: the two best-known tests in the statistical literature, Hartigan's Dip and Silverman's Bandwidth, and a test designed in this paper, called the Proportional Mass test (PM). Three main results are uncovered. First, when the traditional tests are used, unimodality is rejected in about 90 percent of the retailers. When we used the PM test, which reduces the impact of smaller modes in the distribution and can be applied to test for modality around zero percent, we still reject unimodality in two thirds of the supermarkets. Second, category-level heterogeneity can account for about half of the PM test's rejections of unimodality. Finally, a simulation of the model in Alvarez, Lippi, and Paciello (2010) shows that the data is consistent a combination of both time and state-dependent pricing behaviors.

Suggested Citation

  • Alberto Cavallo & Roberto Rigobon, 2011. "The Distribution of the Size of Price Changes," NBER Working Papers 16760, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:16760
    Note: IFM
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w16760.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Levy, Daniel & Bergen, Mark & Dutta, Shantanu & Venable, Robert, 1997. "The Magnitude of Menu Costs: Direct Evidence from Large U.S. Supermarket Chains," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 112(3), pages 791-824.
    2. Fernando E. Alvarez & Francesco Lippi & Luigi Paciello, 2011. "Optimal Price Setting With Observation and Menu Costs," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(4), pages 1909-1960.
    3. N. Gregory Mankiw & Ricardo Reis, 2002. "Sticky Information versus Sticky Prices: A Proposal to Replace the New Keynesian Phillips Curve," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1295-1328.
    4. Patrick Bajari & Ali Hortaçsu, 2004. "Economic Insights from Internet Auctions," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(2), pages 457-486, June.
    5. Woodford, Michael, 2009. "Information-constrained state-dependent pricing," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(S), pages 100-124.
    6. Jeffrey R. Campbell & Benjamin Eden, 2014. "Rigid Prices: Evidence From U.S. Scanner Data," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 55(2), pages 423-442, May.
    7. Bartosz Mackowiak & Frank Smets, 2008. "On implications of micro price data for macro models," Conference Series ; [Proceedings], Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    8. Alberto Cavallo, 2018. "Scraped Data and Sticky Prices," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 100(1), pages 105-119, March.
    9. Fredrik Wulfsberg, 2009. "Price adjustments and inflation - evidence from Norwegian consumer price data 1975-2004," Working Paper 2009/11, Norges Bank.
    10. Mikhail Golosov & Robert E. Lucas Jr., 2007. "Menu Costs and Phillips Curves," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(2), pages 171-199.
    11. Gita Gopinath & Roberto Rigobon, 2008. "Sticky Borders," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(2), pages 531-575.
    12. Peter J. Klenow & Oleksiy Kryvtsov, 2008. "State-Dependent or Time-Dependent Pricing: Does it Matter for Recent U.S. Inflation?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(3), pages 863-904.
    13. Daniel J. Henderson & Christopher F. Parmeter & R. Robert Russell, 2008. "Modes, weighted modes, and calibrated modes: evidence of clustering using modality tests," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(5), pages 607-638.
    14. Calvo, Guillermo A., 1983. "Staggered prices in a utility-maximizing framework," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 383-398, September.
    15. Mark Bils & Peter J. Klenow, 2004. "Some Evidence on the Importance of Sticky Prices," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(5), pages 947-985, October.
    16. Virgiliu Midrigan, 2011. "Menu Costs, Multiproduct Firms, and Aggregate Fluctuations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(4), pages 1139-1180, July.
    17. Klenow, Peter J. & Malin, Benjamin A., 2010. "Microeconomic Evidence on Price-Setting," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: Benjamin M. Friedman & Michael Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 6, pages 231-284, Elsevier.
    18. Fisher, Timothy C. G. & Konieczny, Jerzy D., 2000. "Synchronization of price changes by multiproduct firms: evidence from Canadian newspaper prices," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 68(3), pages 271-277, September.
    19. Anderson, Gordon, 2004. "Toward an empirical analysis of polarization," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 122(1), pages 1-26, September.
    20. Etienne Gagnon, 2009. "Price Setting during Low and High Inflation: Evidence from Mexico," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(3), pages 1221-1263.
    21. M.‐Y. Cheng & P. Hall, 1998. "Calibrating the excess mass and dip tests of modality," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 60(3), pages 579-589.
    22. Mark Bils & Peter J. Klenow & Benjamin A. Malin, 2012. "Reset Price Inflation and the Impact of Monetary Policy Shocks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(6), pages 2798-2825, October.
    23. Martin Eichenbaum & Nir Jaimovich & Sergio Rebelo, 2008. "Reference Prices and Nominal Rigidities," NBER Working Papers 13829, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    24. Patrick J. Kehoe & Virgiliu Midrigan, 2007. "Sales and the real effects of monetary policy," Working Papers 652, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    25. Marco Bonomo & Carlos Carvalho & Rene Garcia, 2010. "State-dependent pricing under infrequent information: a unified framework," Staff Reports 455, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    26. Paapaa, Richard & van Dijk, Herman K., 1998. "Distribution and mobility of wealth of nations," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(7), pages 1269-1293, July.
    27. Emmanuel Dhyne & Luis J. Álvarez & Hervé Le Bihan & Giovanni Veronese & Daniel Dias & Johannes Hoffmann & Nicole Jonker & Patrick Lünnemann & Fabio Rumler & Jouko Vilmunen, 2005. "Price setting in the euro area: Some stylized facts from Individual Consumer Price Data," Working Paper Research 74, National Bank of Belgium.
    28. Patrick Bajari & Ali Hortacsu, 2003. "Economic Insights from Internet Auctions: A Survey," NBER Working Papers 10076, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    29. Cecchetti, Stephen G., 1986. "The frequency of price adjustment : A study of the newsstand prices of magazines," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 255-274, April.
    30. Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson, 2008. "Five Facts about Prices: A Reevaluation of Menu Cost Models," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(4), pages 1415-1464.
    31. Carlton, Dennis W, 1986. "The Rigidity of Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 637-658, September.
    32. Saul Lach & Daniel Tsiddon, 2007. "Small price changes and menu costs," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(7), pages 649-656.
    33. Alan Kackmeister, 2007. "Yesterday's Bad Times Are Today's Good Old Times: Retail Price Changes Are More Frequent Today Than in the 1890s," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(8), pages 1987-2020, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Viacheslav Sheremirov & Oleksandr Talavera, 2018. "Price Setting in Online Markets: Does IT Click?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 16(6), pages 1764-1811.
    2. Etienne Gagnon & David López-Salido & Nicolas Vincent, 2013. "Individual Price Adjustment along the Extensive Margin," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(1), pages 235-281.
    3. Kota Watanabe & Tsutomu Watanabe, 2017. "Price Rigidity at Near-Zero Inflation Rates: Evidence from Japan," UTokyo Price Project Working Paper Series 076, University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Economics.
    4. Banerjee, Shesadri & Bhattacharya, Rudrani, 2017. "Micro-level Price Setting Behaviour in India: Evidence from Group and Sub-Group Level CPI-IW Data," Working Papers 17/217, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
    5. Fernando Alvarez & Francesco Lippi, 2014. "Price Setting With Menu Cost for Multiproduct Firms," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82(1), pages 89-135, January.
    6. Choudhary, M. Ali & Faheem, Abdul & Hanif, M. Nadim & Naeem, Saima & Pasha, Farooq, 2016. "Price setting & price stickiness: A developing economy perspective," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 44-61.
    7. Fabrice Defever & Alejandro Riano, 2017. "Twin peaks," Discussion Papers 2017-15, University of Nottingham, GEP.
    8. Patrick Bajari & Zhihao Cen & Victor Chernozhukov & Manoj Manukonda & Suhas Vijaykumar & Jin Wang & Ramon Huerta & Junbo Li & Ling Leng & George Monokroussos & Shan Wan, 2023. "Hedonic Prices and Quality Adjusted Price Indices Powered by AI," Papers 2305.00044, arXiv.org.
    9. Erwan Gautier & Ronan Le Saout, 2015. "The Dynamics of Gasoline Prices: Evidence from Daily French Micro Data," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(6), pages 1063-1089, September.
    10. Mr. Balazs Csonto & Yuxuan Huang & Mr. Camilo E Tovar Mora, 2019. "Is Digitalization Driving Domestic Inflation?," IMF Working Papers 2019/271, International Monetary Fund.
    11. Alberto Cavallo & Roberto Rigobon, 2016. "The Billion Prices Project: Using Online Prices for Measurement and Research," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 30(2), pages 151-178, Spring.
    12. Stéphane Dupraz, 2024. "A Kinked‐Demand Theory of Price Rigidity," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 56(2-3), pages 325-363, March.
    13. Steffen Ahrens & Stephen Sacht, 2014. "Estimating a high-frequency New-Keynesian Phillips curve," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 607-628, March.
    14. Erwan Gautier & Ronan Le Saout, 2015. "L'ajustement microéconomique des prix des carburants en France," Working Papers hal-01195759, HAL.
    15. Martin Eichenbaum & Nir Jaimovich & Sergio Rebelo & Josephine Smith, 2014. "How Frequent Are Small Price Changes?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 137-155, April.
    16. Alberto Cavallo & Brent Neiman & Roberto Rigobon, 2014. "Currency Unions, Product Introductions, and the Real Exchange Rate," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(2), pages 529-595.
    17. Oriol Valles Codina, 2020. "Economic Production as Life: A Classical Approach to Computational Social Science," Working Papers 2001, New School for Social Research, Department of Economics.
    18. Alberto Cavallo, 2018. "Scraped Data and Sticky Prices," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 100(1), pages 105-119, March.
    19. Kochen Federico, 2016. "Price-Setting in Mexico and the Real Effects of Monetary Shocks," Working Papers 2016-21, Banco de México.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Klenow, Peter J. & Malin, Benjamin A., 2010. "Microeconomic Evidence on Price-Setting," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: Benjamin M. Friedman & Michael Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 6, pages 231-284, Elsevier.
    2. Etienne Gagnon & David López-Salido & Nicolas Vincent, 2013. "Individual Price Adjustment along the Extensive Margin," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(1), pages 235-281.
    3. Alvarez González, Luis Julián, 2008. "What Do Micro Price Data Tell Us on the Validity of the New Keynesian Phillips Curve?," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 2, pages 1-36.
    4. Bartosz Mackowiak & Frank Smets, 2008. "On implications of micro price data for macro models," Conference Series ; [Proceedings], Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    5. Carstensen, Kai & Schenkelberg, Heike, 2011. "Time- or State-Dependence? An Analysis of Inflation Dynamics using German Business Survey Data," Discussion Papers in Economics 12170, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    6. Emmanuel Dhyne & Jerzy Konieczny & Fabio Rumler & Patrick Sevestre, 2009. "Price rigidity in the euro area - An assessment," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 380, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    7. Daniel Levy & Dongwon Lee & Haipeng (Allan) Chen & Robert J. Kauffman & Mark Bergen, 2011. "Price Points and Price Rigidity," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(4), pages 1417-1431, November.
    8. Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson, 2008. "Five Facts about Prices: A Reevaluation of Menu Cost Models," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(4), pages 1415-1464.
    9. Alvarez, Fernando & Lippi, Francesco & ,, 2013. "Small and large price changes and the propagation of monetary shocks," CEPR Discussion Papers 9770, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Dhyne, Emmanuel & Fuss, Catherine & Pesaran, M. Hashem & Sevestre, Patrick, 2011. "Lumpy Price Adjustments: A Microeconometric Analysis," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 29(4), pages 529-540.
    11. Martin Eichenbaum & Nir Jaimovich & Sergio Rebelo & Josephine Smith, 2014. "How Frequent Are Small Price Changes?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 137-155, April.
    12. Costain, James & Nakov, Anton, 2015. "Precautionary price stickiness," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 218-234.
    13. Marco Bonomo & Marcelo Medeiros & Arnildo Correa, 2011. "Estimating Strategic Complementarity in a State-Dependent Pricing Model," 2011 Meeting Papers 691, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    14. B. Verhelst & D. Van Den Poel, 2010. "Price rigidity in Europe and the US: A comparative analysis using scanner data," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 10/684, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    15. Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson, 2013. "Price Rigidity: Microeconomic Evidence and Macroeconomic Implications," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 5(1), pages 133-163, May.
    16. Ray, Sourav & Snir, Avichai & Levy, Daniel, 2023. "Retail Pricing Format and Rigidity of Regular Prices," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, pages 1-1.
    17. Cosmin Ilut & Rosen Valchev & Nicolas Vincent, 2020. "Paralyzed by Fear: Rigid and Discrete Pricing Under Demand Uncertainty," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(5), pages 1899-1938, September.
    18. Franz Ruch & Neil Rankin & Stan du Plessis, 2016. "Decomposing inflation using micropricelevel data South Africas pricing dynamics," Working Papers 7353, South African Reserve Bank.
    19. Demery, David, 2012. "State-dependent pricing and the non-neutrality of money," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 933-944.
    20. Peter Karadi & Adam Reiff, 2019. "Menu Costs, Aggregate Fluctuations, and Large Shocks," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 111-146, July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E00 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - General
    • E3 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:16760. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.