IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/mgtdec/v28y2007i7p763-775.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Retail prices during a change in monetary regimes: evidence from Sears, Roebuck catalogs, 1938-1951

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew T. Young

    (University of Mississippi, MS, USA)

  • Alexander K. Blue

    (Emory University, GA, USA)

Abstract

We present microeconomic evidence on US pricing dynamics pre and post-establishment of the Bretton Woods (BW) monetary regime. We track prices of 49 goods (1172 observations) in 1938-1951 Sears, Roebuck catalogs. The average length between (nominal) price changes was over 2 years. The average was higher (2.05 years) in the pre-BW period than in the later (2.01 years). We find that prices of brand name goods were relatively rigid; three never changed price. Price changes were larger during the 1945-1951 period than pre-BW by between 0.60 and 1.83%. Price changes displayed a higher correlation with inflation pre-BW. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew T. Young & Alexander K. Blue, 2007. "Retail prices during a change in monetary regimes: evidence from Sears, Roebuck catalogs, 1938-1951," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(7), pages 763-775.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:mgtdec:v:28:y:2007:i:7:p:763-775
    DOI: 10.1002/mde.1378
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/mde.1378
    File Function: Link to full text; subscription required
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/mde.1378?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Renner, Elke & Tyran, Jean-Robert, 2004. "Price rigidity in customer markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 55(4), pages 575-593, December.
    2. Raymond F. Mikesell, 1945. "The Key Currency Proposal," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 59(4), pages 563-576.
    3. Andrew T. Young & Daniel Levy, 2014. "Explicit Evidence of an Implicit Contract," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 30(4), pages 804-832.
    4. 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.
    5. Bordo, Michael D. & Schwartz, Anna J., 1999. "Monetary policy regimes and economic performance: The historical record," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 3, pages 149-234, Elsevier.
    6. Mark J. Zbaracki & Mark Ritson & Daniel Levy & Shantanu Dutta & Mark Bergen, 2004. "Managerial and Customer Costs of Price Adjustment: Direct Evidence from Industrial Markets," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(2), pages 514-533, May.
    7. Ball, Laurence & Mankiw, N Gregory, 1994. "Asymmetric Price Adjustment and Economic Fluctuations," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 104(423), pages 247-261, March.
    8. Martin Neil Baily, 1978. "Stabilization Policy and Private Economic Behavior," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 9(1), pages 11-60.
    9. Conlon, John R & Liu, Christina Y, 1997. "Can More Frequent Price Changes Lead to Price Inertia? Nonneutralities in a State-Dependent Pricing Context," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 38(4), pages 893-914, November.
    10. Peter N. Ireland, 1997. "Stopping inflations, big and small," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, pages 759-782.
    11. 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.
    12. Bordo Michael D. & Kydland Finn E., 1995. "The Gold Standard As a Rule: An Essay in Exploration," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 423-464, October.
    13. Anil K Kashyap, 1995. "Sticky Prices: New Evidence from Retail Catalogs," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(1), pages 245-274.
    14. Alexander L. Wolman, 2007. "The frequency and costs of individual price adjustment," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(6), pages 531-552.
    15. Arturo Estrella & Jeffrey C. Fuhrer, 2003. "Monetary Policy Shifts and the Stability of Monetary Policy Models," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(1), pages 94-104, February.
    16. Carlton, Dennis W, 1986. "The Rigidity of Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 637-658, September.
    17. Alan Kackmeister, 2005. "Yesterday's bad times are today's good old times: retail price changes in the 1890s were smaller, less frequent, and more permanent," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2005-18, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    18. Daniel Tsiddon, 1993. "The (Mis)Behaviour of the Aggregate Price Level," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(4), pages 889-902.
    19. Davis, Michael C & Hamilton, James D, 2004. "Why Are Prices Sticky? The Dynamics of Wholesale Gasoline Prices," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(1), pages 17-37, February.
    20. David Genesove, 2003. "The Nominal Rigidity of Apartment Rents," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(4), pages 844-853, November.
    21. Lucas, Robert Jr, 1976. "Econometric policy evaluation: A critique," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 19-46, January.
    22. Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1977. "Rules Rather Than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(3), pages 473-491, June.
    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. Young, Andrew T. & Levy, Daniel, 2014. "Explicit Evidence of an Implicit Contract," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 30(4), pages 804-832.
    2. 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.

    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. Young, Andrew T. & Levy, Daniel, 2014. "Explicit Evidence of an Implicit Contract," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 30(4), pages 804-832.
    2. Alexander L. Wolman, 2007. "The frequency and costs of individual price adjustment," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(6), pages 531-552.
    3. Levy, Daniel & Snir, Avichai & Gotler, Alex & Chen, Haipeng (Allan), 2020. "Not all price endings are created equal: Price points and asymmetric price rigidity," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, issue forthcomi.
    4. Chen, Haipeng (Allan) & Levy, Daniel & Ray, Sourav & Bergen, Mark, 2008. "Asymmetric Price Adjustment in the Small," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 55(4), pages 728-737.
    5. Levy, Daniel & Müller, Georg & Chen, Haipeng (Allan) & Bergen, Mark & Dutta, Shantanu, 2010. "Holiday Price Rigidity and Cost of Price Adjustment," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 77(305), pages 172-198.
    6. 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.
    7. Levy, Daniel & Young, Andrew T., 2004. ""The Real Thing:" Nominal Price Rigidity of the Nickel Coke, 1886-1959," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 36(4 (Specia), pages 765-799.
    8. Erwan Gautier, 2009. "Les ajustements microéconomiques des prix : une synthèse des modèles théoriques et résultats empiriques," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 119(3), pages 323-372.
    9. Nakamura, Emi & Steinsson, Jón, 2011. "Price setting in forward-looking customer markets," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 220-233.
    10. 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.
    11. Daniel Levy & Haipeng Allan Chen & Sourav Ray & Mark Bergen, 2004. "Asymmetric Price Adjustment "in the Small:" An Implication of Rational Inattention," Macroeconomics 0407012, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 11 May 2005.
    12. 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.
    13. Richards, Timothy J. & Patterson, Paul M., 2004. "Causes of retail price fixity: an empirical analysis," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 117-136.
    14. Watanabe, Makoto, 2008. "Inflation, price competition, and consumer search technology," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(12), pages 3780-3806, December.
    15. Davis, Michael C & Hamilton, James D, 2004. "Why Are Prices Sticky? The Dynamics of Wholesale Gasoline Prices," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(1), pages 17-37, February.
    16. Taylor, John B., 1999. "Staggered price and wage setting in macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 15, pages 1009-1050, Elsevier.
    17. repec:rim:rimwps:04-07 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Maarten Dossche, 2009. "Understanding Inflation Dynamics.Where Do We Stand?," Review of Business and Economic Literature, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Review of Business and Economic Literature, vol. 0(2), pages 209-227.
    19. 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.
    20. Slade, Margaret E., 1999. "Sticky prices in a dynamic oligopoly: An investigation of (s,S) thresholds," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 477-511, May.
    21. Kevin X. D. Huang & Jonathan L. Willis, 2018. "Sectoral Interactions and Monetary Policy under Costly Price Adjustments," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 19(2), pages 337-374, November.

    More about this item

    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:wly:mgtdec:v:28:y:2007:i:7:p:763-775. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jhome/7976 .

    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.