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The Effects Of General Inflation And Idiosyncratic Cost Shocks On Within-Commodity Price Dispersion: Evidence From Microdata

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  • Joe Beaulieu
  • Joe Mattey

Abstract

This study investigates the dispersion of price levels within highly disaggregated markets by examining plant-level product records from the U.S. Census of Manufactures. The paper estimates the effects of inflation on price dispersion through cross-sectional variation in the drift rate of average input costs within a market, arguing that, in several models that relate inflation to price dispersion, the effects of cost increases on dispersion is similar to the effects of general inflation. We also disentangle the effects of aggregate and idiosyncratic shocks on price dispersion. In general, we find that the higher the drift rate of input costs of a given commodity, the larger the amount of price dispersion. The standard deviation of idiosyncratic shocks also is positively correlated with the degree of price dispersion. © 1999 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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  • Joe Beaulieu & Joe Mattey, 1999. "The Effects Of General Inflation And Idiosyncratic Cost Shocks On Within-Commodity Price Dispersion: Evidence From Microdata," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(2), pages 205-216, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:81:y:1999:i:2:p:205-216
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Bakhshi, Hasan, 2002. "Inflation and relative price variability," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 27-33, June.
    2. Caglayan, Mustafa & Filiztekin, Alpay, 2003. "Nonlinear impact of inflation on relative price variability," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 213-218, May.
    3. Chad Syverson, 2007. "Prices, Spatial Competition And Heterogeneous Producers: An Empirical Test," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(2), pages 197-222, June.
    4. Carmine Ornaghi, 2006. "Assessing the effects of measurement errors on the estimation of production functions," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(6), pages 879-891.
    5. Giovanni Dosi, 2024. "Why is economics the only discipline with so many curves going up and down? There is an alternative," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 14(1), pages 1-34, March.
    6. David Fielding & Christopher Hajzler & James (Jim) C. MacGee, 2017. "Price-Level Dispersion versus Inflation-Rate Dispersion: Evidence from Three Countries," Staff Working Papers 17-3, Bank of Canada.
    7. Paul L. E. Grieco & Shengyu Li & Hongsong Zhang, 2016. "Production Function Estimation With Unobserved Input Price Dispersion," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 57(2), pages 665-690, May.
    8. Sascha S. Becker, 2011. "What Drives the Relationship Between Inflation and Price Dispersion? Market Power vs. Price Rigidity," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2011-019, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.

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