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Consumer search, price dispersion, and international relative price volatility

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George Alessandria

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Abstract

This paper develops a model of consumer search consistent with the evidence of substantial price dispersion within countries. This model is used to study international relative price fluctuations. Consumer search frictions permit firms to price discriminate across markets based on the local wage of consumers. With price dispersion, the market price of a good does not measure its resource cost. This breaks the tight link between relative quantities and relative prices implied by most models. We show that volatile and persistent fluctuations in relative wages lead to volatile and persistent fluctuations in relative prices at the disaggregate level. These deviations from the law of one price substantially increase international relative price volatility. With productivity and taste shocks, the model generates international business cycles that closely match the data

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Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in its series Working Papers with number 05-9.

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Date of creation: 2005
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Handle: RePEc:fip:fedpwp:05-9

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Keywords: Prices ; Consumers;

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Full references

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.)

  1. Lukasz A. Drozd & Jaromir B. Nosal, 2008. "Understanding international prices: customers as capital," Staff Report 411, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. [Downloadable!]
  2. David M. Arseneau & Sanjay K. Chugh, 2007. "Bargaining, fairness, and price rigidity in a DSGE environment," International Finance Discussion Papers 900, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
  3. Allen Head & Alok Kumar & Beverly Lapham, 2006. "Market Power, Price Adjustment, and Inflation," Working Papers 1089, Queen's University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  4. George Alessandria & Joseph Kaboski, 2007. "Pricing-to-market and the failure of absolute PPP," Working Papers 07-29, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. [Downloadable!]
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