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We examine the frequency of price changes for 350 categories of goods and services covering about 70 percent of consumer spending, on the basis of unpublished data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for 1995–97. In comparison with previous studies, we find much more frequent price changes, with half of prices lasting less than 4.3 months. Even excluding temporary price cuts (sales), we find that half of prices last 5.5 months or less. We also find that the frequency of price changes differs dramatically across goods. Compared to the predictions of popular sticky‐price models, actual inflation rates are far more volatile and transient for sticky‐price goods.

We model the decisions of a multiproduct firm that faces a fixed \"menu\" cost: once it is paid, the firm can adjust the price of all its products. We characterize analytically the steady state firm's decisions in terms of the structural parameters: the variability of the flexible prices, the curvature of the profit function, the size of the menu cost, and the number of products sold. We provide expressions for the steady state frequency of adjustment, the hazard rate of price adjustments, and the size distribution of price changes, all in terms of the structural parameters. We study analytically the impulse response of aggregate prices and output to a monetary shock. The size of the output response and its duration both increase with the number of products; they more than double as the number of products goes from 1 to 10, quickly converging to the response of Taylor's staggered price model.

We establish five facts about prices in the U.S. economy: (1) For consumer prices, the median frequency of nonsale price change is roughly half of what it is including sales (9-12% per month versus 19-20% per month for identical items; 11-13% per month versus 21-22% per month including product substitutions). The median frequency of price change for finished-goods producer prices is comparable to that of consumer prices excluding sales. (2) One-third of nonsale price changes are price decreases. (3) The frequency of price increases covaries strongly with inflation, whereas the frequency of price decreases and the size of price increases and price decreases do not. (4) The frequency of price change is highly seasonal: it is highest in the first quarter and then declines. (5) We find no evidence of upwardsloping hazard functions of price changes for individual products. We show that the first, second, and third facts are consistent with a benchmark menu-cost model, whereas the fourth and fifth facts are not.

We document basic facts about prices in online markets in the United States and Canada, which is a rapidly growing segment of the retail sector. Relative to prices in regular stores, prices in online markets are more flexible and exhibit stronger pass-through (60-75 percent) and faster convergence (half-life less than two months) in response to movements of the nominal exchange rate. Multiple margins of adjustment are active in the process of responding to nominal exchange rate shocks. Properties of goods, sellers, and markets are systematically related to pass-through and the speed of price adjustment for international price differentials.

We show, using novel data on currency and prices for US imports, that even conditional on a price change, there is a large difference in the exchange rate pass-through of the average good priced in dollars (25 percent) versus nondollars (95 percent). We document this to be the case across countries and within disaggregated sectors. This finding contradicts the assumption in an important class of models that the currency of pricing is exogenous. We present a model of endogenous currency choice in a dynamic price setting environment and show that the predictions of the model are strongly supported by the data.

Prices tend to remain constant for a period of time and then jump. In the literature, this \"rigidity\" is usually interpreted to reflect a cost of adjusting prices. This article shows that price rigidity can alternatively reflect optimal price setting when there are no adjustment costs, namely, if the seller is rationally inattentive. The model generates non-trivial pricing patterns that are consistent with the data and that are hard to explain with the traditional adjustment-cost model. In particular, prices are adjusted frequently but move back and forth between a few given values, hazard functions are downward sloping, and responses to persistent shocks are sluggish. These results are obtained in a model that implements rational inattention without simplifying assumptions on the functional forms of the processed signals.

The Changes Price Index has considerable volatility that makes massive changes in the global market; subsequently, it could affect tourism demand and transform visitor profiles. The paper aims to answer the effect of it on international tourists and know the segment(s) beneficiated by this context. The research also considers that the CPI is inhomogeneous and involves different types to expand the analysis. The analysis will run a Latent Class model over the international tourist survey data conducted by the Spanish Statistic Office, first to obtain the clusters and later to analyze the elasticity of exogenous variables over the groups. The results show how low-expenditure profile is more sensitive to price changes; meanwhile, others with more added value are more inelastic. The main conclusion is that the business focused on the sun and sand segment and low expenses should adapt their supply by increasing the international tourist perceived value. El Índice de Precios al Consumo (IPC) tiene una volatilidad considerable que provoca cambios masivos en el mercado mundial; en consecuencia, podría afectar a la demanda turística y transformar los perfiles de los visitantes. El objetivo del trabajo es responder al efecto que tiene sobre los turistas internacionales y conocer el segmento o segmentos beneficiados por este contexto. La investigación también considera que el IPC es heterogéneo e involucra diferentes tipos para ampliar el análisis. El análisis correrá un modelo de Clases Latentes sobre los datos de la encuesta de turismo internacional realizada por la INE, primero para obtener los clusters y después para analizar la elasticidad de las variables exógenas sobre los grupos. Los resultados muestran cómo el perfil de bajo gasto es más sensible a los cambios de precios; mientras, otros de mayor valor añadido son más inelásticos. La principal conclusión es que los negocios centrados en el segmento de sol y playa y bajo gasto deberían adaptar su oferta incrementando el valor percibido por el turista internacional.

We review recent evidence on price rigidity from the macroeconomics literature and discuss how this evidence is used to inform macroeconomic modeling. Sluggish price adjustment is a leading explanation for the large effects of demand shocks on output and, in particular, the effects of monetary policy on output. A recent influx of data on individual prices has greatly deepened macroeconomists’ understanding of individual price dynamics. However, the analysis of these new data raises a host of new empirical issues that have not traditionally been confronted by parsimonious macroeconomic models of price setting. Simple statistics such as the frequency of price change may be misleading guides to the flexibility of the aggregate price level in a setting in which temporary sales, product churning, cross-sectional heterogeneity, and large idiosyncratic price movements play an important role. We discuss empirical evidence on these and other important features of micro price adjustment and ask how they affect the sluggishness of aggregate price adjustment and the economy’s response to demand shocks.

We study the price-setting problem of a firm in the presence of both observation and menu costs. The firm optimally decides when to \"review\" costly information on the adequacy of its price. Upon each review, the firm chooses whether to adjust its price, one or more times, before the next price review. Each price adjustment entails paying a menu cost. The firm's choices map into several statistics: the frequency of price reviews, the frequency of price adjustments, the size distribution of price changes, and the hazard rate of price adjustments. The simultaneous presence of observation and menu costs produces complementarities that change the predictions of simpler models featuring one cost only. For instance, infrequent observations may reflect a high menu cost rather than high observation costs: in spite of these complementarities, we show that the ratio of the two costs is identified by several statistics on price observations and adjustments.

We analyze the microfoundations of the routine in a study of price-adjustment processes at a manufacturing firm. Existing theory says that truces balance cognitive and motivational differences across functions, but there is scant evidence on how truces work. We show both stability and change in routines. For minor price adjustments, routines incorporate truces in stable but separate market interpretations by the sales and marketing groups. Major price changes put truces at risk, as latent conflict over information and interests becomes overt. The ensuing battle shows how interests, information, and truces are intertwined in performing the routine. Routines are not just stable entities, but adaptive performances that include conflict. We illustrate how our approach addresses fundamental problems such as how firms perform economics, how routines incorporate economic theory, and how routines shape macroeconomic dynamics. We argue that our approach can be extended to any routine-based organizational work.