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Price-setting behaviour in Belgium - what can be learned from an ad hoc survey?

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    Abstract

    This paper reports the results of an ad hoc survey on price-setting behaviour conducted in February 2004 among 2,000 Belgian firms. The reported results clearly deviate from a situation of perfect competition and show that firms have some market power. Pricing-to-market is applied by a majority of industrial firms. Prices are rather sticky. The average duration between two consecutive price reviews is 10 months, whereas it amounts to 13 months between two consecutive price changes. Most firms adopt time-dependent price-reviewing under normal circumstances. However, when specific events occur, the majority will adopt a state-dependent behaviour. Evidence is found in favour of both nominal (mainly implicit and explicit contracts) and real rigidities (including flat marginal costs and counter-cyclical movements in desired mark-ups). The survey results point to a non-negligible degree of non-optimal price-setting.

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    File URL: http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/scpwps/ecbwp448.pdf
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    Bibliographic Info

    Paper provided by European Central Bank in its series Working Paper Series with number 448.

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    Length: 60 pages
    Date of creation: Mar 2005
    Date of revision:
    Handle: RePEc:ecb:ecbwps:20050448

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    Related research

    Keywords: Price-setting behaviour; price rigidity; nominal rigidity; real rigidity; survey; timedependent pricing; state-dependent pricing; pricing-to-market.;

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    1. Blanchard, Olivier Jean & Kiyotaki, Nobuhiro, 1987. "Monopolistic Competition and the Effects of Aggregate Demand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(4), pages 647-66, September.
    2. V. V. Chari & Patrick J. Kehoe & Ellen R. McGrattan, 2000. "Sticky Price Models of the Business Cycle: Can the Contract Multiplier Solve the Persistence Problem?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(5), pages 1151-1180, September.
    3. Luc Aucremanne & Guy Brys & Mia Hubert & Peter J. Rousseeuw & Anja Struyf, 2002. "Inflation, relative prices and nominal rigidities," Working Paper Research 20, National Bank of Belgium.
    4. Chevalier, Judith A & Scharfstein, David S, 1996. "Capital-Market Imperfections and Countercyclical Markups: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(4), pages 703-25, September.
    5. Tamim Bayoumi & Douglas Laxton & Paolo Pesenti, 2004. "Benefits and spillovers of greater competition in Europe: A macroeconomic assessment," Working Paper Series 341, European Central Bank.
    6. Luc Aucremanne & Emmanuel Dhyne, 2004. "How frequently do prices change? Evidence based on the micro data underlying the Belgian CPI," Working Paper Research 44, National Bank of Belgium.
    7. Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Charles L. Evans, 2001. "Nominal rigidities and the dynamic effects of a shock to monetary policy," Working Paper Series WP-01-08, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    8. Apel, Mikael & Friberg, Richard & Hallsten, Kerstin, 2005. "Microfoundations of Macroeconomic Price Adjustment: Survey Evidence from Swedish Firms," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(2), pages 313-38, April.
    9. Aucremanne, L. & Cornille, D., 2001. "Attractive Prices and Euro-Rounding Effects on Inflation," Papers 17, Warwick - Development Economics Research Centre.
    10. Luc Aucremann & David Cornille, 2001. "Attractive prices and euro-rounding effects on inflation," Working Paper Document 17, National Bank of Belgium.
    11. Calvo, Guillermo A., 1983. "Staggered prices in a utility-maximizing framework," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 383-398, September.
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