This paper studies the welfare properties of the equilibrium timing of price changes. Staggered price setting has the advantage that it permits rapid adjustment to firm-specific shocks, but the disadvantages that it causes unwanted fluctuations in relative prices and that, by creating price level inertia, it can increase aggregate fluctuations. Because each firm ignores its contribution to these problems, staggering can be a stable equilibrium even if it is highly inefficient. In addition, there can be multiple equilibria in the timing of prices changes; indeed, whenever there is an inefficient staggered equilibrium, there is also an efficient equilibrium with synchronized price setting. Copyright 1989 by The Review of Economic Studies Limited.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Volume (Year): 56 (1989) Issue (Month): 2 (April) Pages: 179-98 Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML
(with abstract),
plain text
(with abstract),
BibTeX,
RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite),
ReDIF
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.) This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.