IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejmac/v12y2020i1p104-52.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Temporary Price Changes, Inflation Regimes, and the Propagation of Monetary Shocks

Author

Listed:
  • Fernando Alvarez
  • Francesco Lippi

Abstract

We present a sticky price model that features the coexistence of many price changes, most of which are temporary, with a modest flexibility of the aggregate price level. Stickiness is introduced in the form of a price plan, namely a set of two prices: either price can be charged at any moment but changing the plan entails a menu cost. We analytically solve for the optimal plan and for the aggregate output response to a monetary shock. We present evidence consistent with the model implications using scanner data, as well as Consumer Price Index data across a wide range of inflation rates.

Suggested Citation

  • Fernando Alvarez & Francesco Lippi, 2020. "Temporary Price Changes, Inflation Regimes, and the Propagation of Monetary Shocks," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(1), pages 104-152, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejmac:v:12:y:2020:i:1:p:104-52
    DOI: 10.1257/mac.20180383
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mac.20180383
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mac.20180383.data
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mac.20180383.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mac.20180383.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/mac.20180383?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kehoe, Patrick & Midrigan, Virgiliu, 2015. "Prices are sticky after all," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 35-53.
    2. Bernardo Guimaraes & Kevin D. Sheedy, 2011. "Sales and Monetary Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(2), pages 844-876, April.
    3. 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.
    4. Caballero, Ricardo J. & Engel, Eduardo M.R.A., 2007. "Price stickiness in Ss models: New interpretations of old results," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(Supplemen), pages 100-121, September.
    5. 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.
    6. Fernando Alvarez & Francesco Lippi & Juan Passadore, 2017. "Are State- and Time-Dependent Models Really Different?," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(1), pages 379-457.
    7. 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.
    8. Avinash Dixit, 1991. "Analytical Approximations in Models of Hysteresis," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(1), pages 141-151.
    9. Robert J. Barro, 1972. "A Theory of Monopolistic Price Adjustment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 39(1), pages 17-26.
    10. Alan S. Blinder, 1994. "On Sticky Prices: Academic Theories Meet the Real World," NBER Chapters, in: Monetary Policy, pages 117-154, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Oleksiy Kryvtsov & Nicolas Vincent, 2014. "On the Importance of Sales for Aggregate Price Flexibility," Staff Working Papers 14-45, Bank of Canada.
    12. Martin Eichenbaum & Nir Jaimovich & Sergio Rebelo, 2011. "Reference Prices, Costs, and Nominal Rigidities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(1), pages 234-262, February.
    13. Fernando Alvarez & Hervé Le Bihan & Francesco Lippi, 2016. "The Real Effects of Monetary Shocks in Sticky Price Models: A Sufficient Statistic Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(10), pages 2817-2851, October.
    14. 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.
    15. Calvo, Guillermo A., 1983. "Staggered prices in a utility-maximizing framework," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 383-398, September.
    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. 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.
    2. Fernando Alvarez & Francesco Lippi & Aleksei Oskolkov, 2020. "The Macroeconomics of Sticky Prices with Generalized Hazard Functions," EIEF Working Papers Series 2017, Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF), revised Jun 2020.
    3. Andrés Blanco & Bernardo Diaz de Astarloa & Andres Drenik & Christian Moser & Danilo R. Trupkin, 2022. "The evolution of the earnings distribution in a volatile economy: Evidence from Argentina," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(4), pages 1361-1403, November.
    4. Carlos Esteban Posada, 2023. "Inflation targeting strategy and its credibility," Papers 2301.11207, arXiv.org.
    5. Guido Ascari & Timo Haber, 2019. "Sticky prices and the transmission mechanism of monetary policy: A minimal test of New Keynesian models," Economics Series Working Papers 869, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    6. Fernando Alvarez & Francesco Lippi, 2022. "The Analytic Theory of a Monetary Shock," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(4), pages 1655-1680, July.
    7. Guido Ascari & Timo Haber, 2022. "Non-Linearities, State-Dependent Prices and the Transmission Mechanism of Monetary Policy," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(641), pages 37-57.

    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. Fernando Alvarez & Francesco Lippi, 2016. "Price plans and the real effects of monetary policy," EIEF Working Papers Series 1609, Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF), revised May 2016.
    2. 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.
    3. Joseph Vavra, 2011. "Inflation Dynamics and Time-Varying Uncertainty: New Evidence and an Ss Interpretation," 2011 Meeting Papers 126, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    4. 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.
    5. Hobijn, Bart & Nechio, Fernanda & Shapiro, Adam Hale, 2021. "Using Brexit to identify the nature of price rigidities," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    6. 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.
    7. Lippi, Francesco & Alvarez, Fernando & Ferrara, Andrea & Gautier, Erwan & Le Bihan, Hervé, 2021. "Empirical Investigation of a Sufficient Statistic for Monetary Shocks," CEPR Discussion Papers 16626, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Guido Ascari & Timo Haber, 2019. "Sticky prices and the transmission mechanism of monetary policy: A minimal test of New Keynesian models," Economics Series Working Papers 869, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    9. Fernando Alvarez & Francesco Lippi & Aleksei Oskolkov, 2022. "The Macroeconomics of Sticky Prices with Generalized Hazard Functions [“Optimal Inattention to the Stock Market With Information Costs and Transactions Costs,”]," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 137(2), pages 989-1038.
    10. Hahn, Volker & Marenčák, Michal, 2020. "Price points and price dynamics," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 127-144.
    11. Pascal Seiler & Barbara Rudolf, 2022. "Price Setting Before and During the Pandemic: Evidence from Swiss Consumer Prices," KOF Working papers 22-506, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
    12. Petrella, Ivan & Santoro, Emiliano & Simonsen, Lasse de la Porte, 2018. "Time-varying Price Flexibility and Inflation Dynamics," CEPR Discussion Papers 13027, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    13. David Staines, 2023. "Stochastic Equilibrium the Lucas Critique and Keynesian Economics," Papers 2312.16214, arXiv.org.
    14. James Costain & Anton Nakov, 2019. "Logit Price Dynamics," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 51(1), pages 43-78, February.
    15. Carvalho, Carlos & Kryvtsov, Oleksiy, 2021. "Price selection," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 56-75.
    16. Joseph Vavra, 2014. "Inflation Dynamics and Time-Varying Volatility: New Evidence and an Ss Interpretation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(1), pages 215-258.
    17. Nakov, Anton & Petit, Borja & Costain, James, 2018. "Monetary policy implications of state-dependent prices and wages," CEPR Discussion Papers 13398, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Luminita Stevens, 2020. "Coarse Pricing Policies," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 87(1), pages 420-453.
    19. Fernando Alvarez & Hervé Le Bihan & Francesco Lippi, 2013. "Small and Large Price Changes and the Propagation of Monetary Shocks," EIEF Working Papers Series 1318, Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF), revised Aug 2013.
    20. Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson & Patrick Sun & Daniel Villar, 2018. "The Elusive Costs of Inflation: Price Dispersion during the U.S. Great Inflation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(4), pages 1933-1980.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O23 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy - - - Fiscal and Monetary Policy in Development

    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:aea:aejmac:v:12:y:2020:i:1:p:104-52. 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: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.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.