IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/3364.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Price Behavior in Japanese and U.S. Manufacturing

Author

Listed:
  • Richard C. Marston

Abstract

Relative price changes in Japanese and U.S. manufacturing are driven by two forces, productiviry growth which leads to secular changes in costs and exchange rate fluctuations which change relative prices between the two countries. In sectors where productivity growth is high, reductions in costs can neutralize exchange rate appreciations to keep prices competitive with those abroad, at least in the long run, But even in these sectors, exchange rate fluctuations are the dominant influence on relative competitiveness in the short run. Faced with swings in exchange rates, firms adopt defensive measures to defend their export markets. The paper presents estimates of "pricing to market" elasticities which suggest that firms lower their export prices in domestic currency relative to their domestic prices in order to limit the effects of currency appreciations. There is evidence that firms in both countries pursue such pricing strategies, but pricing to market is more extensive in Japan. In response to a appreciation of the yen, Japanese firms reduce their export prices in yen sharply so as to limit the pass-through of the appreciation into the dollar prices of their exports.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard C. Marston, 1990. "Price Behavior in Japanese and U.S. Manufacturing," NBER Working Papers 3364, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3364
    Note: ITI IFM
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w3364.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Knetter, Michael M, 1989. "Price Discrimination by U.S. and German Exporters," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(1), pages 198-210, March.
    2. Feenstra, Robert C., 1989. "Symmetric pass-through of tariffs and exchange rates under imperfect competition: An empirical test," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(1-2), pages 25-45, August.
    3. Froot, Kenneth A & Klemperer, Paul D, 1989. "Exchange Rate Pass-Through When Market Share Matters," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 637-654, September.
    4. Kravis, Irving B. & Lipsey, Robert E., 1978. "Price behavior in the light of balance of payments theories," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 193-246, May.
    5. Sven W. Arndt & J. David Richardson, 1987. "Real-Financial Linkages Among Open Economies," NBER Working Papers 2230, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Baldwin, Richard, 1988. "Hyteresis in Import Prices: The Beachhead Effect," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(4), pages 773-785, September.
    7. Paul Krugman, 1986. "Pricing to Market when the Exchange Rate Changes," NBER Working Papers 1926, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Richard C. Marston, 1989. "Pricing to Market in Japanese Manufacturing," NBER Working Papers 2905, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Bela Balassa, 1964. "The Purchasing-Power Parity Doctrine: A Reappraisal," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 72(6), pages 584-584.
    10. Lawrence H. Officer, 1982. "The Purchasing-Power-Parity Theory of Gerrard de Malynes," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 14(2), pages 256-259, Summer.
    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. Paul J.J. Welfens, 2009. "Innovationen und Transatlantische Bankenkrise: Eine ordnungspolitische Analyse," EIIW Discussion paper disbei171, Universitätsbibliothek Wuppertal, University Library.
    2. Takatoshi Ito, 1994. "On Recent Movements of Japanese Current Accounts and Capital Flows," NBER Chapters, in: Macroeconomic Linkage: Savings, Exchange Rates, and Capital Flows, pages 31-52, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Paul Welfens, 2012. "Marshall-Lerner condition and economic globalization," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 9(2), pages 191-207, June.
    4. Melvyn Fuss & Steven Murphy & Leonard Waverman, 1992. "The State of the North American and Japanese Motor Vehicle Industries: A Partially Calibrated Model to Examine the Impacts of Trade Policy Changes," NBER Working Papers 4225, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Cabral, Luis M. B. & Mello, Antonio S., 1997. "Exchange rate expectations and market shares," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 61-67, August.

    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. Michael M. Knetter, 1992. "Exchange Rates and Corporate Pricing Strategies," NBER Working Papers 4151, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Jeffrey Frankel & David Parsley & Shang-Jin Wei, 2012. "Slow Pass-through Around the World: A New Import for Developing Countries?," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 23(2), pages 213-251, April.
    3. Rebecca Hellerstein, 2005. "A Decomposition of the Sources of Incomplete Cross-Border Transmission," 2005 Meeting Papers 805, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    4. Carlo Gola, 2000. "Export pricing strategy of Italian firms: from the depreciation of the lira to the euro," LIUC Papers in Economics 77, Cattaneo University (LIUC).
    5. Charles Engel, 2006. "Equivalence Results for Optimal Pass-Through, Optimal Indexing to Exchange Rates, and Optimal Choice of Currency for Export Pricing," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 4(6), pages 1249-1260, December.
    6. Valerie Herzberg & George Kapetanios & Simon Price, 2003. "Import prices and exchange rate pass-through: theory and evidence from the United Kingdom," Bank of England working papers 182, Bank of England.
    7. Froot, Kenneth A. & Rogoff, Kenneth, 1995. "Perspectives on PPP and long-run real exchange rates," Handbook of International Economics, in: G. M. Grossman & K. Rogoff (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 32, pages 1647-1688, Elsevier.
    8. Chang, Byoung-Ky, 1999. "Three essays on imperfect competition and exchange rate pass-through in the presence of multiple exchange rates," ISU General Staff Papers 1999010108000013554, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    9. Vesala, Jukka, 1992. "Incomplete exchange rate pass-through and hysteresis in trade : A survey of recent theories and an empirical study of export pricing of Finnish paper manufacturies," Research Discussion Papers 29/1992, Bank of Finland.
    10. Kadiyali, Vrinda, 1997. "Exchange rate pass-through for strategic pricing and advertising: An empirical analysis of the U.S. photographic film industry," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(3-4), pages 437-461, November.
    11. Priestley, Richard & Odegaard, Bernt Arne, 2007. "Linear and nonlinear exchange rate exposure," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 1016-1037, October.
    12. Michael M. Knetter, 1992. "International Comparisons of Pricing-to-Market Behavior," NBER Working Papers 4098, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Vesala, Jukka, 1992. "Incomplete exchange rate pass-through and hysteresis in trade: A survey of recent theories and an empirical study of export pricing of Finnish paper manufacturies," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 29/1992, Bank of Finland.
    14. repec:zbw:bofrdp:1992_029 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Rebecca Hellerstein & Sofia Berto Villas-Boas, 2006. "Arm's-length transactions as a source of incomplete cross-border transmission: the case of autos," Staff Reports 251, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    16. John R. Baldwin & Beiling Yan, 2007. "Exchange Rate Cycles and Canada/US Manufacturing Prices," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 143(3), pages 508-533, October.
    17. Gordon M. Bodnar & Bernard Dumas & Richard C. Marston, 2002. "Pass‐through and Exposure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(1), pages 199-231, February.
    18. Dragan Miljkovic & Gary Brester & John Marsh, 2003. "Exchange rate pass-through, price discrimination, and US meat export prices," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(6), pages 641-650.
    19. Webber, A., 1999. "Dynamic and Long Run Responses of Import Prices to the Exchange Rate in the Asia-Pacific," Economics Working Papers WP99-11, School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
    20. Richard C. Marston, 1991. "Price Behavior in Japanese and U. S. Manufacturing," NBER Chapters, in: Trade with Japan: Has the Door Opened Wider?, pages 121-148, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Ayoub Yousefi, 2000. "Merchandise Trade Balances of Less Developed Countries and Exchange Rate of the U.S. Dollar: Cases of Iran, Venezuela & Saudi Arabia," Working Papers 00002, University of Waterloo, Department of Economics, revised Feb 2000.

    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:nbr:nberwo:3364. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.