IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/restat/v102y2020i1p162-179.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Cross-Sectional Distribution of Price Stickiness Implied by Aggregate Data

Author

Listed:
  • Carlos Carvalho

    (PUC-Rio)

  • Niels Arne Dam

    (Finance Denmark)

  • Jae Won Lee

    (University of Virginia)

Abstract

We provide evidence on three mechanisms that can reconcile frequent individual price changes with sluggish aggregate price dynamics. To that end, we estimate a semistructural model that can extract information about real rigidities and the distribution of price stickiness from aggregate data. Hence, the model can also speak to the debate about the aggregate implications of sales. Our estimates indicate large real rigidities and substantial heterogeneity in price stickiness. Moreover, the cross-sectional distribution of price stickiness implied by aggregate data is in line with an empirical distribution obtained from microprice data that factors out sales and product substitutions.

Suggested Citation

  • Carlos Carvalho & Niels Arne Dam & Jae Won Lee, 2020. "The Cross-Sectional Distribution of Price Stickiness Implied by Aggregate Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(1), pages 162-179, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:102:y:2020:i:1:p:162-179
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/rest_a_00811
    Download Restriction: Access to PDF is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kehoe, Patrick & Midrigan, Virgiliu, 2015. "Prices are sticky after all," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 35-53.
    2. Peter J. Klenow & Oleksiy Kryvtsov, 2008. "State-Dependent or Time-Dependent Pricing: Does it Matter for Recent U.S. Inflation?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(3), pages 863-904.
    3. 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.
    4. Carlos Carvalho & Fernanda Nechio, 2016. "Factor Specificity and Real Rigidities," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 22, pages 208-222, October.
    5. Taylor, John B, 1979. "Staggered Wage Setting in a Macro Model," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(2), pages 108-113, May.
    6. Bernardo Guimaraes & Kevin D. Sheedy, 2011. "Sales and Monetary Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(2), pages 844-876, April.
    7. Ricardo Reis, 2006. "Inattentive Producers," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(3), pages 793-821.
    8. Taylor, John B, 1980. "Aggregate Dynamics and Staggered Contracts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 88(1), pages 1-23, February.
    9. Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson, 2010. "Monetary Non-neutrality in a Multisector Menu Cost Model," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(3), pages 961-1013.
    10. Jouchi Nakajima & Nao Sudo & Takayuki Tsuruga, 2010. "How well do the sticky price models explain the disaggregated price responses to aggregate technology and monetary policy shocks?," IMES Discussion Paper Series 10-E-22, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan.
    11. Hafedh Bouakez & Emanuela Cardia & Francisco J. Ruge-Murcia, 2009. "The Transmission Of Monetary Policy In A Multisector Economy," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 50(4), pages 1243-1266, November.
    12. Carvalho, Carlos & Schwartzman, Felipe, 2015. "Selection and monetary non-neutrality in time-dependent pricing models," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 141-156.
    13. Coenen, Gunter & Levin, Andrew T. & Christoffel, Kai, 2007. "Identifying the influences of nominal and real rigidities in aggregate price-setting behavior," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(8), pages 2439-2466, November.
    14. Bartosz Mackowiak & Mirko Wiederholt, 2009. "Optimal Sticky Prices under Rational Inattention," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 769-803, June.
    15. Laurence Ball & David Romer, 1990. "Real Rigidities and the Non-Neutrality of Money," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 57(2), pages 183-203.
    16. Stefano Eusepi & Bart Hobijn & Andrea Tambalotti, 2011. "CONDI: A Cost-of-Nominal-Distortions Index," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 53-91, July.
    17. Bartosz Mackowiak & Frank Smets, 2008. "On implications of micro price data for macro models," Conference Series ; [Proceedings], Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    18. Martin Eichenbaum & Nir Jaimovich & Sergio Rebelo & Josephine Smith, 2014. "How Frequent Are Small Price Changes?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 137-155, April.
    19. Oleksiy Kryvtsov & Nicolas Vincent, 2014. "On the Importance of Sales for Aggregate Price Flexibility," Staff Working Papers 14-45, Bank of Canada.
    20. Robert B. Barsky & Christopher L. House & Miles S. Kimball, 2007. "Sticky-Price Models and Durable Goods," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 984-998, June.
    21. Sbordone, Argia M., 2002. "Prices and unit labor costs: a new test of price stickiness," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 265-292, March.
    22. Guerrieri, Luca, 2006. "The Inflation Persistence of Staggered Contracts," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 38(2), pages 483-494, March.
    23. John Geweke, 1999. "Using Simulation Methods for Bayesian Econometric Models," Computing in Economics and Finance 1999 832, Society for Computational Economics.
    24. 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.
    25. Imbs, Jean & Jondeau, Eric & Pelgrin, Florian, 2011. "Sectoral Phillips curves and the aggregate Phillips curve," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(4), pages 328-344.
    26. Carlos Carvalho & Fernanda Nechio, 2011. "Aggregation and the PPP Puzzle in a Sticky-Price Model," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2391-2424, October.
    27. John Geweke, 1999. "Using simulation methods for bayesian econometric models: inference, development,and communication," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(1), pages 1-73.
    28. Dixon, Huw & Kara, Engin, 2011. "Contract length heterogeneity and the persistence of monetary shocks in a dynamic generalized Taylor economy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 280-292, February.
    29. Felipe Schwartzman & Carlos Carvalho, 2008. "Heterogeneous Price Setting Behavior and Monetary Non-neutrality: Some General Results," 2008 Meeting Papers 1040, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    30. Bouakez, Hafedh & Cardia, Emanuela & Ruge-Murcia, Francisco, 2014. "Sectoral price rigidity and aggregate dynamics," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 1-22.
    31. Mr. Esteban Jadresic, 1999. "Sticky Prices: An Empirical Assessment of Alternative Models," IMF Working Papers 1999/072, International Monetary Fund.
    32. Carlos Carvalho & Fernanda Nechio, 2016. "Factor Specificity and Real Rigidities," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 22, pages 208-222, October.
    33. Carvalho Carlos, 2006. "Heterogeneity in Price Stickiness and the Real Effects of Monetary Shocks," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 6(3), pages 1-58, December.
    34. Sims, Christopher A, 2002. "Solving Linear Rational Expectations Models," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 20(1-2), pages 1-20, October.
    35. Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson, 2008. "Five Facts about Prices: A Reevaluation of Menu Cost Models," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(4), pages 1415-1464.
    36. Calvo, Guillermo A., 1983. "Staggered prices in a utility-maximizing framework," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 383-398, September.
    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. Seula Kim & Jae Won Lee, 2020. "Sectoral Heterogeneity in Nominal Rigidities in Korea: Implications for Monetary Policy," Korean Economic Review, Korean Economic Association, vol. 36, pages 59-99.
    2. Jonathan Payne & Lawrence Uren, 2014. "Economic Policy and the Great Depression in a Small Open Economy," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 46(2-3), pages 347-370, March.
    3. Cheng-qi Hou & Pin Wang, 2014. "An Estimation of Sectoral Price Stickiness using Aggregate Data," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 0(2), pages 53-70, June.
    4. Nihar Shah, 2022. "Doubly heterogeneous monetary spillovers," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(2), pages 126-150, 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. Carlos Carvalho & Niels Arne Dam, 2009. "Estimating the cross-sectional distribution of price stickiness from aggregate data," Staff Reports 419, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    2. Carlos Viana de Carvalho & Niels Arne Dam & Jae Won Lee, 2014. "Real Rigidities and the Cross-Sectional Distribution of Price Stickiness: Evidence from Micro and Macro Data Combined," Textos para discussão 634, Department of Economics PUC-Rio (Brazil).
    3. Klenow, Peter J. & Malin, Benjamin A., 2010. "Microeconomic Evidence on Price-Setting," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: Benjamin M. Friedman & Michael Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 6, pages 231-284, Elsevier.
    4. Bouakez, Hafedh & Cardia, Emanuela & Ruge-Murcia, Francisco, 2014. "Sectoral price rigidity and aggregate dynamics," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 1-22.
    5. Etienne Gagnon & David López-Salido & Nicolas Vincent, 2013. "Individual Price Adjustment along the Extensive Margin," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(1), pages 235-281.
    6. Taylor, J.B., 2016. "The Staying Power of Staggered Wage and Price Setting Models in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2009-2042, Elsevier.
    7. David Altig & Lawrence Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Jesper Linde, 2011. "Firm-Specific Capital, Nominal Rigidities and the Business Cycle," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 14(2), pages 225-247, April.
    8. Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson, 2010. "Monetary Non-neutrality in a Multisector Menu Cost Model," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(3), pages 961-1013.
    9. David Altig & Lawrence Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Jesper Linde, 2011. "Firm-Specific Capital, Nominal Rigidities and the Business Cycle," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 14(2), pages 225-247, April.
    10. Cheng-qi Hou & Pin Wang, 2014. "An Estimation of Sectoral Price Stickiness using Aggregate Data," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 0(2), pages 53-70, June.
    11. Kim, Seongeun, 2019. "Quality, price stickiness, and monetary policy," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 1-1.
    12. Carvalho, Carlos & Nechio, Fernanda, 2018. "Approximating multisector New Keynesian models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 193-196.
    13. 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.
    14. Fernando Alvarez & Hervé Le Bihan & Francesco Lippi, 2013. "Small and Large Price Changes and the Propagation of Monetary Shocks," EIEF Working Papers Series 1318, Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF), revised Aug 2013.
    15. Yasufumi Gemma & Takushi Kurozumi & Mototsugu Shintani, 2023. "Trend Inflation and Evolving Inflation Dynamics:A Bayesian GMM Analysis," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 51, pages 506-520, December.
    16. Huw David Dixon & Kun Tian, 2017. "What We can Learn About the Behaviour of Firms from the Average Monthly Frequency of Price-Changes: An Application to the UK CPI Data," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 79(6), pages 907-932, December.
    17. Guido Ascari & Timo Haber, 2019. "Sticky prices and the transmission mechanism of monetary policy: A minimal test of New Keynesian models," Economics Series Working Papers 869, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    18. Özmen, M. Utku & Tuğan, Mustafa, 2022. "Heterogeneity in sectoral price and quantity responses to shocks to monetary policy," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    19. Anderson, Eric & Malin, Benjamin A. & Nakamura, Emi & Simester, Duncan & Steinsson, Jón, 2017. "Informational rigidities and the stickiness of temporary Sales," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 64-83.
    20. Nicoletta Berardi & Erwan Gautier & Hervé Le Bihan, 2015. "More Facts about Prices: France Before and During the Great Recession," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(8), pages 1465-1502, December.

    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:tpr:restat:v:102:y:2020:i:1:p:162-179. 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: Kelly McDougall (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://direct.mit.edu/journals .

    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.