IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/jae/japmet/v25y2010i6p903-928.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why are gasoline prices sticky? A test of alternative models of price adjustment

Author

Listed:
  • Christopher Douglas

    (Department of Economics, University of Michigan-Flint, Flint, MI, USA)

  • Ana María Herrera

    (Department of Economics, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA)

Abstract

Macroeconomic models of business cycles rely on the assumption that firms adjust prices infrequently to generate the short-run non-neutrality of money documented by the monetary transmission literature. They posit different mechanisms to generate price stickiness, with correspondingly different implications for inflation dynamics. Using an autoregressive conditional binomial model, we test which mechanism is most consistent with the pattern of price adjustment found in daily wholesale gasoline price data. Our results lead us to reject menu costs and information-processing delays but suggest that strategic considerations related to the idea of 'fair pricing' play an important role in accounting for price stickiness. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher Douglas & Ana María Herrera, 2010. "Why are gasoline prices sticky? A test of alternative models of price adjustment," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(6), pages 903-928.
    • Handle: RePEc:jae:japmet:v:25:y:2010:i:6:p:903-928
    DOI: 10.1002/jae.1115
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/jae.1115
    File Function: Link to full text; subscription required
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://qed.econ.queensu.ca:80/jae/2010-v25.6/
    File Function: Supporting data files and programs
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/jae.1115?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. V. V. Chari & Patrick J. Kehoe & Ellen R. McGrattan, 2000. "Sticky Price Models of the Business Cycle: Can the Contract Multiplier Solve the Persistence Problem?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(5), pages 1151-1180, September.
    2. N. Gregory Mankiw, 1985. "Small Menu Costs and Large Business Cycles: A Macroeconomic Model of Monopoly," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 100(2), pages 529-538.
    3. Levy, Daniel & Bergen, Mark & Dutta, Shantanu & Venable, Robert, 1997. "The Magnitude of Menu Costs: Direct Evidence from Large U.S. Supermarket Chains," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 112(3), pages 791-824.
    4. Nelson, Daniel B, 1991. "Conditional Heteroskedasticity in Asset Returns: A New Approach," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(2), pages 347-370, March.
    5. Julio J. Rotemberg, 2011. "Fair Pricing," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(5), pages 952-981, October.
    6. N. Gregory Mankiw & Ricardo Reis, 2002. "Sticky Information versus Sticky Prices: A Proposal to Replace the New Keynesian Phillips Curve," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1295-1328.
    7. Victor Aguirregabiria, 1999. "The Dynamics of Markups and Inventories in Retailing Firms," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(2), pages 275-308.
    8. Justine S. Hastings & Richard J. Gilbert, 2005. "Market Power, Vertical Integration And The Wholesale Price Of Gasoline," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(4), pages 469-492, December.
    9. Lewis, Matt, 2003. "Asymmetric Price Adjustment and Consumer Search: An Examination of the Retail Gasoline Industry," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt544216d9, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    10. Michael Dotsey & Robert G. King, 2006. "Pricing, Production, and Persistence," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 4(5), pages 893-928, September.
    11. Avinash Dixit, 1991. "Analytical Approximations in Models of Hysteresis," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(1), pages 141-151.
    12. Fishman, Arthur & Simhon, Avi, 2005. "Can small menu costs explain sticky prices?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 227-230, May.
    13. Mark Gertler & Jordi Gali & Richard Clarida, 1999. "The Science of Monetary Policy: A New Keynesian Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1661-1707, December.
    14. Ben S. Bernanke & Julio J. Rotemberg (ed.), 1997. "NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1997," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 026252242x, December.
    15. Ray, Sourav & Chen, Haipeng (Allan) & Bergen, Mark & Levy, Daniel, 2006. "Asymmetric Wholesale Pricing: Theory and Evidence," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 25(2), pages 109-201.
    16. Vuong, Quang H, 1989. "Likelihood Ratio Tests for Model Selection and Non-nested Hypotheses," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(2), pages 307-333, March.
    17. Matthew S. Lewis, 2011. "Asymmetric Price Adjustment and Consumer Search: An Examination of the Retail Gasoline Market," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(2), pages 409-449, June.
    18. Mark Bils & Peter J. Klenow, 2004. "Some Evidence on the Importance of Sticky Prices," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(5), pages 947-985, October.
    19. Michael D. Noel, 2007. "Edgeworth Price Cycles: Evidence From The Toronto Retail Gasoline Market," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(1), pages 69-92, March.
    20. Slade, Margaret E., 1999. "Sticky prices in a dynamic oligopoly: An investigation of (s,S) thresholds," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 477-511, May.
    21. Michael C. Davis, 2007. "The dynamics of daily retail gasoline prices," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(7), pages 713-722.
    22. Rotemberg, Julio J., 2005. "Customer anger at price increases, changes in the frequency of price adjustment and monetary policy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(4), pages 829-852, May.
    23. Robert J. Barro, 1972. "A Theory of Monopolistic Price Adjustment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 39(1), pages 17-26.
    24. Margaret E. Slade & G.R.E.Q.A.M., 1998. "Optimal Pricing with Costly Adjustment: Evidence from Retail-Grocery Prices," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 65(1), pages 87-107.
    25. Erceg, Christopher J. & Henderson, Dale W. & Levin, Andrew T., 2000. "Optimal monetary policy with staggered wage and price contracts," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 281-313, October.
    26. Kahneman, Daniel & Knetsch, Jack L & Thaler, Richard, 1986. "Fairness as a Constraint on Profit Seeking: Entitlements in the Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 728-741, September.
    27. Calvo, Guillermo A., 1983. "Staggered prices in a utility-maximizing framework," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 383-398, September.
    28. Severin Borenstein & A. Colin Cameron & Richard Gilbert, 1997. "Do Gasoline Prices Respond Asymmetrically to Crude Oil Price Changes?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(1), pages 305-339.
    29. Justine S. Hastings, 2004. "Vertical Relationships and Competition in Retail Gasoline Markets: Empirical Evidence from Contract Changes in Southern California," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 317-328, March.
    30. Robert F. Engle & Jeffrey R. Russell, 1998. "Autoregressive Conditional Duration: A New Model for Irregularly Spaced Transaction Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(5), pages 1127-1162, September.
    31. Justine S. Hastings, 2004. "Vertical Relationships and Competition in Retail Gasoline Markets: Empirical Evidence from Contract Changes in Southern California," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 317-328, March.
    32. Daniel Levy, 2007. "Price rigidity and flexibility: new empirical evidence," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(7), pages 639-647.
    33. Julio J. Rotemberg & Michael Woodford, 1997. "An Optimization-Based Econometric Framework for the Evaluation of Monetary Policy," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1997, Volume 12, pages 297-361, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    34. Mark Gertler & Jordi Gali & Richard Clarida, 1999. "The Science of Monetary Policy: A New Keynesian Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 1661-1707, December.
    35. Eytan Sheshinski & Yoram Weiss, 1977. "Inflation and Costs of Price Adjustment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 44(2), pages 287-303.
    36. Eytan Sheshinski & Yoram Weiss, 1983. "Optimum Pricing Policy under Stochastic Inflation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 50(3), pages 513-529.
    37. Davis, Michael C & Hamilton, James D, 2004. "Why Are Prices Sticky? The Dynamics of Wholesale Gasoline Prices," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(1), pages 17-37, February.
    38. Sims, Christopher A., 2003. "Implications of rational inattention," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 665-690, April.
    39. Mariano Tappata, 2009. "Rockets and feathers: Understanding asymmetric pricing," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 40(4), pages 673-687, December.
    40. Julio J. Rotemberg, 1982. "Monopolistic Price Adjustment and Aggregate Output," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 49(4), pages 517-531.
    41. Douglas Rivers & Quang Vuong, 2002. "Model selection tests for nonlinear dynamic models," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 5(1), pages 1-39, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Ricardo Reis, 2006. "Inattentive Producers," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 73(3), pages 793-821.
    2. Alexander L. Wolman, 2007. "The frequency and costs of individual price adjustment," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(6), pages 531-552.
    3. Gaspar, Vitor & Levin, Andrew & Smets, Frank & Martins, Fernando Manuel, 2007. "Evidence from Surveys of Price-Setting Managers: Policy Lessons and Directions for Ongoing Research," CEPR Discussion Papers 6227, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Douglas, Christopher C. & Herrera, Ana María, 2014. "Dynamic pricing and asymmetries in retail gasoline markets: What can they tell us about price stickiness?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 122(2), pages 247-252.
    5. Emmanuel Dhyne & Jerzy Konieczny & Fabio Rumler & Patrick Sevestre, 2009. "Price rigidity in the euro area - An assessment," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 380, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    6. Chen, Haipeng (Allan) & Levy, Daniel & Ray, Sourav & Bergen, Mark, 2008. "Asymmetric Price Adjustment in the Small," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 55(4), pages 728-737.
    7. Dhyne, Emmanuel & Fuss, Catherine & Pesaran, M. Hashem & Sevestre, Patrick, 2011. "Lumpy Price Adjustments: A Microeconometric Analysis," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 29(4), pages 529-540.
    8. Davis, Michael C & Hamilton, James D, 2004. "Why Are Prices Sticky? The Dynamics of Wholesale Gasoline Prices," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 36(1), pages 17-37, February.
    9. Erwan Gautier, 2009. "Les ajustements microéconomiques des prix : une synthèse des modèles théoriques et résultats empiriques," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 119(3), pages 323-372.
    10. Váry, Miklós, 2021. "The long-run real effects of monetary shocks: Lessons from a hybrid post-Keynesian-DSGE-agent-based menu cost model," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    11. Migliardo, Carlo, 2012. "Heterogeneity in price setting behavior, spatial disparities and sectoral diversity: Evidence from a panel of Italian firms," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 1106-1118.
    12. Kevin X. D. Huang & Jonathan L. Willis, 2018. "Sectoral Interactions and Monetary Policy under Costly Price Adjustments," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 19(2), pages 337-374, November.
    13. M. Utku Özmen & Orhun Sevinç, 2016. "Price Rigidity in Turkey: Evidence from Micro Data," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 52(4), pages 1029-1045, April.
    14. Andrew T. Levin & Alexei Onatski & John Williams & Noah M. Williams, 2006. "Monetary Policy under Uncertainty in Micro-Founded Macroeconometric Models," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2005, Volume 20, pages 229-312, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Levy, Daniel & Lee, Dongwon & Chen, Haipeng (Allan) & Kauffman, Robert J. & Bergen, Mark, 2011. "Price Points and Price Rigidity," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 93(4), pages 1417-1431.
    16. Trabandt, Mathias, 2003. "Sticky Information vs. Sticky Prices : A Horse Race in a DSGE Framework," SFB 373 Discussion Papers 2003,41, Humboldt University of Berlin, Interdisciplinary Research Project 373: Quantification and Simulation of Economic Processes.
    17. Richard Dennis, 2006. "The frequency of price adjustment and New Keynesian business cycle dynamics," Working Paper Series 2006-22, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    18. Ahrens, Steffen & Hartmann, Matthias, 2014. "State-dependence vs. timedependence: An empirical multi-country investigation of price sluggishness," Kiel Working Papers 1907, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    19. Federico Di Pace & Matthias Hertweck, 2019. "Labor Market Frictions, Monetary Policy, and Durable Goods," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 32, pages 274-304, April.
    20. N. Gregory Mankiw & Ricardo Reis, 2002. "Sticky Information versus Sticky Prices: A Proposal to Replace the New Keynesian Phillips Curve," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1295-1328.

    More about this item

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Why are gasoline prices sticky? A test of alternative models of price adjustment (Journal of Applied Econometrics 2010) in ReplicationWiki

    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:jae:japmet:v:25:y:2010:i:6:p:903-928. 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: Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing or Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.interscience.wiley.com/jpages/0883-7252/ .

    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.