This paper analyses the results of a survey conducted by the Banco de Portugal with the main purpose of investigating firms’ price setting behaviour. The evidence points to the presence of a considerable degree of price stickiness, which seems to be higher in services than in manufacturing. The presence of implicit contracts between firms and their customers under which the former pledge to stabilise their prices as a way to increase customers’ loyalty is apparently the main reason that prevents firms from changing their prices more promptly. Other relevant sources of price stickiness were also found: coordination problems arising from the preference of firms not to change their prices unless their competitors do so, the constraint imposed by a high share of fixed costs, marginal costs that vary little when costs are an important determinant in pricing decisions or the presence of formal contracts that are costly to renegotiate.
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Paper provided by European Central Bank in its series Working Paper Series with number
562.
Find related papers by JEL classification: E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation D40 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure and Pricing - - - General L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
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.:
Jordi Gali & Mark Gertler & J. David Lopez-Salido, 2001.
"European Inflation Dynamics,"
NBER Working Papers
8218, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
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.)
Fabiani, Silvia & Druant, Martine & Hernando, Ignacio & Kwapil, Claudia & Landau, Bettina & Loupias, Claire & Martins, Fernando & Matha, Thomas & Sabbatini, Roberto & Stahl, Harald & Stokman, Ad, 2006.
"What Firms' Surveys Tell Us about Price-Setting Behavior in the Euro Area,"
MPRA Paper
808, University Library of Munich, Germany.
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