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When Little Things Mean a Lot: On the Inefficiency of Item Pricing Laws

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Author Info
Mark Bergen
Daniel Levy ()
Sourav Ray
Paul Rubin ()
Benjamin Zeliger

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Abstract

We study item-pricing laws (which require that each item in a store be individually marked with a price sticker) and examine and quantify their costs and benefits. On the cost side, we argue that item-pricing laws increase the retailers’ costs, forcing them to raise prices. We test this prediction using data on retail prices from large supermarket chains in the Tri-State area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. The Tri-States offer a unique setting—a natural experiment—to study item-pricing laws because the States vary in their use of item-pricing laws, but otherwise offer similar markets and chains operating in a close proximity to each other in a relatively homogenous socioeconomic environment. We use two datasets, one emphasizing the breadth in coverage across products and the other across stores. We find consistent evidence across products, product categories, stores, chains, states, and sampling periods, that the prices at stores facing item-pricing laws are higher than the prices at stores not facing the item pricing laws by about 25¢ or 9.6% per item. We also have data from supermarket chains that would be subject to item-pricing laws but are exempted from item pricing requirement because they use costly electronic shelf label systems. Using this data as a control, we find that the electronic shelf label store prices fall between the item-pricing law and non-item-pricing law store prices: they are lower than the item-pricing law store prices by about 15¢ per item on average, but are higher than the non-item-pricing law store prices by about 10¢ per item on average. On the benefit side, we study the frequency and the magnitude of supermarket pricing errors, which the item-pricing laws are supposed to prevent. We quantify the benefits of the IPLs by conservatively assuming that they successfully accomplish their mission of preventing all price mistakes. Comparing the costs of item-pricing laws to their benefits, we find that the item-pricing law costs are at least an order of magnitude higher than the benefits.

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Paper provided by Department of Economics, Emory University (Atlanta) in its series Emory Economics with number 0404.

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Date of creation: Jun 2004
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Handle: RePEc:emo:wp2003:0404

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  5. Sam Peltzman, 2000. "Prices Rise Faster than They Fall," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(3), pages 466-502, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  6. Mark Zbaracki & Mark Bergen & Shantanu Dutta & Daniel Levy & Mark Ritson, 2005. "Beyond the Cost of Price Adjustment: Investments in Pricing Capital," Macroeconomics 0505013, EconWPA. [Downloadable!]
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  7. Jeffrey Milyo & Joel Waldfogel, 1999. "The Effect of Price Advertising on Prices: Evidence in the Wake of 44 Liquormart," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(5), pages 1081-1096, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  8. Daniel Levy & Mark Bergen & Shantanu Dutta & Robert Venable, 2005. "The Magnitude of Menu Costs: Direct Evidence from Large U.S. Supermarket Chains," Macroeconomics 0505012, EconWPA. [Downloadable!]
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  9. Daniel Levy & Shantanu Dutta & Mark Bergen, 2004. "Heterogeneity in Price Rigidity: Evidence from a Case Study Using Micro-Level Data," Macroeconomics 0402021, EconWPA. [Downloadable!]
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  10. Sourav Ray & Haipeng (Allan) Chen & Mark Bergen & Daniel Levy, 2005. "Asymmetric Wholesale Pricing: Theory and Evidence," Emory Economics 0513, Department of Economics, Emory University (Atlanta). [Downloadable!]
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  11. Daniel Levy & Georg Muller & Shantanu Dutta & Mark Bergen, 2004. "Holiday Price Rigidity and Cost of Price Adjustment," Macroeconomics 0402019, EconWPA, revised 10 Jun 2005. [Downloadable!]
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  12. Robert Barsky & Mark Bergen & Shantanu Dutta & Daniel Levy, 2001. "What Can the Price Gap between Branded and Private Label Products Tell Us about Markups?," NBER Working Papers 8426, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  13. N. Gregory Mankiw & Ricardo Reis, 2001. "Sticky Information Versus Sticky Prices: A Proposal to Replace the New Keynesian Phillips Curve," NBER Working Papers 8290, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  14. Warner, Elizabeth J & Barsky, Robert B, 1995. "The Timing and Magnitude of Retail Store Markdowns: Evidence from Weekends and Holidays," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 110(2), pages 321-52, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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(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.)

  1. Patrick Lünnemann & Ladislav Wintr, 2006. "Are Internet Prices sticky?," BCL working papers cahier_etude_22, Central Bank of Luxembourg. [Downloadable!]
  2. Levy, Daniel & Müller, Georg & Chen, Allan (Haipeng) & Bergen, Mark & Dutta, Shantanu, 2008. "Holiday Price Rigidity and Cost of Price Adjustment," MPRA Paper 13095, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  3. Daniel Levy & Hainpeng (Allan) Chen & Sourav Ray & Mark Bergen, 2004. "Asymmetric Price Adjustment in the Small: An Implication of Rational Inattention," Emory Economics 0408, Department of Economics, Emory University (Atlanta). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. Mark J. Zbaracki, 2007. "A sociological view of costs of price adjustment: contributions from grounded theory methods," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(6), pages 553-567. [Downloadable!]
  5. 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. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  6. Patrick Lunnemann & Ladislav Wintr, 2006. "Are internet prices sticky?," Working Paper Series 645, European Central Bank. [Downloadable!]
  7. James G. Mulligan & Nilotpal Das, 2004. "Vintage Effects and the Diffusion of Time-Saving Technological Innovations: The Adoption of Optical Scanners by U.S. Supermarkets."," Working Papers 04-06, University of Delaware, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  8. James G. Mulligan & Nilotpal Das, 2006. "Item Pricing Laws, Supplier Behavior, and the Diffusion of Time-Saving Technology Innovations," Working Papers 06-11, University of Delaware, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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