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The Cyclicality of Sales, Regular, and Effective Prices: Business Cycle and Policy Implications: Comment*

* This paper is a replication of an original study

Author

Listed:
  • Etienne Gagnon
  • David López-Salido
  • Jason Sockin

Abstract

Coibion, Gorodnichenko, and Hong (2015) argue that the CPI underestimates the deceleration in consumer prices during economic downturns because the index fails to account for the reallocation of consumer spending from high-price to low-price stores. We show that their conclusion hinges on some nonstandard methodological choices, including an aggressive censoring of price adjustments and a treatment for missing observations that can leave out some of the price variation. Under our preferred methodology, the regression results no longer indicate that greater store switching during downturns is a statistically or economically significant phenomenon.

Suggested Citation

  • Etienne Gagnon & David López-Salido & Jason Sockin, 2017. "The Cyclicality of Sales, Regular, and Effective Prices: Business Cycle and Policy Implications: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(10), pages 3229-3242, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:107:y:2017:i:10:p:3229-42
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.20150891
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
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    Cited by:

    1. Fernando Borraz & Giacomo Livan & Anahí Rodríguez-Martínez & Pablo Picardo, 2020. "Price, sales, and the business cycle: a time series principal component analysis," Documentos de trabajo 2020002, Banco Central del Uruguay.
    2. Colin Hottman & Surabhi Ghai, 2019. "Exchange Rates, Product Variety, and Substitution in U.S. Scanner Data," 2019 Meeting Papers 1059, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    3. Borraz, Fernando & Livan, Giacomo & Rodríguez-Martínez, Anahí & Picardo, Pablo, 2022. "Price, sales, and the business cycle: Microeconomic evidence," Latin American Journal of Central Banking (previously Monetaria), Elsevier, vol. 3(1).

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    Replication

    This item is a replication of:
  • Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Gee Hee Hong, 2015. "The Cyclicality of Sales, Regular and Effective Prices: Business Cycle and Policy Implications," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(3), pages 993-1029, March.

    • More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • L25 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Performance
    • L81 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Retail and Wholesale Trade; e-Commerce
    • M31 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Marketing

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    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. The Cyclicality of Sales, Regular, and Effective Prices: Business Cycle and Policy Implications: Comment (AER 2017) in ReplicationWiki

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