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Inflation and the Informativeness of Prices

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Author Info
Laurence Ball
David Romer

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Abstract

This paper studies the welfare effects of the relative price variability arising from inflation. When agents interact in anonymous markets, with customers buying from new suppliers each period, relative price variability benefits customers and cannot harm suppliers substantially. But if customers and suppliers form long-term relationships, prices have an informational role: a potential customer uses current prices as signals of future prices. Inflation reduces the informativeness of current prices, causing customers to make costly mistakes about which relationships to enter. In addition, the reduced informativeness of prices makes demand less price-elastic, thereby increasing markups. Both effects can be quantitatively significant at moderate inflation rates.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 4267.

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Date of creation: Jan 1993
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:4267

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation

References listed on IDEAS
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  1. Dennis W. Carlton, 1982. "The Disruptive Effect of Inflation on the Organization of Markets," NBER Chapters, in: Inflation: Causes and Effects, pages 139-152 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!]
  2. Peter A. Diamond, 1988. "Search, Sticky Prices, and Inflation," Working papers 509, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
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  3. Cecchetti, Stephen G., 1986. "The frequency of price adjustment : A study of the newsstand prices of magazines," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 255-274, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Stanley Fischer, 1981. "Relative Shocks, Relative Price Variability, and Inflation," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 12(1981-2), pages 381-442. [Downloadable!]
  5. Anil K. Kashyap, 1991. "Sticky prices: new evidence from retail catalogs," Working Paper Series, Macroeconomic Issues 91-26, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
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  6. Lucas, Robert E, Jr, 1973. "Some International Evidence on Output-Inflation Tradeoffs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 63(3), pages 326-34, June.
  7. Arthur M. Okun, 1975. "Inflation: Its Mechanics and Welfare Costs," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 6(1975-2), pages 351-402. [Downloadable!]
  8. Roland Benabou & Robert Gertner, 1991. "The Informativeness of Prices: Search With Learning and Cost Uncertainty," NBER Working Papers 3833, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Roland Benabou & Jerzy Konieczny, 1993. "On Inflation and Output with Costly Price Changes: A Simple Unifying Result," NBER Technical Working Papers 0135, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  10. Naish, Howard F, 1986. "Price Adjustment Costs and the Output-Inflation Trade-off," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 53(210), pages 219-30, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Mariano Tommasi, 1992. "The Welfare Effects of Inflation, The Consequences of Price Instability on Search Markets," UCLA Economics Working Papers 655, UCLA Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  12. Michael L. Wachter & Oliver E. Williamson, 1978. "Obligational Markets and the Mechanics of Inflation," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 9(2), pages 549-571, Autumn. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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