We use new disaggregated data on consumer prices to determine why there is variability in prices of similar goods across U.S. cities. We address questions similar to those that have arisen in the international context: is this variability purely a result of market segmentation or do sticky nominal prices play a role? We also examine how the degree of tradability of a good influences price variability. Surprisingly, we find that variability is larger for traded-goods. We attribute this finding to greater price stickiness for non-traded goods. Distance between cities accounts for a significant amount of the variation in prices between pairs of cities. But we also find that nominal price stickiness plays an even more significant role.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
7242.
Length: Date of creation: Jul 1999 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:7242
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Find related papers by JEL classification: E3 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles E4 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates
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Engel, Charles & Rogers, John H, 1996.
"How Wide Is the Border?,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 86(5), pages 1112-25, December.
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