IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/canjec/v44y2011i3p749-780.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Nominal rigidities and retail price dispersion in Canada over the twentieth century

Author

Listed:
  • Ross D. Hickey
  • David S. Jacks

Abstract

We introduce a new data set on over 230,000 monthly prices for 10 goods in 50 Canadian cities over the 40‐year period from 1910 to 1950. This information, coupled with previously published price information from the late twentieth century, allows us to present one of the first comprehensive views of nominal rigidities and retail price dispersion over the past 100 years. We find that nominal rigidities have been conditioned upon prevailing rates of inflation with a greater frequency of price changes occurring in the 1920s and the 1970s. Additionally, the process of retail market integration has followed a U‐shaped trajectory with many domestic markets being better integrated – as measured by the average dispersion of retail prices – at mid‐century than in the 1990s. We also consider the linkages between nominal rigidities and price dispersion, finding results consistent with present‐day data. On utilise des données inédites de 230,000 prix mensuels pour 10 produits dans 50 villes canadiennes au cours de la période de quarante ans qui va de 1910 à 1950. Ces données, ajoutées aux renseignements déjà publiés antérieurement sur les prix dans la dernière portion du vingtième siècle, permettent de présenter l’un des premiers portraits compréhensifs des rigidités nominales et de la dispersion des prix de détail au cours des derniers 100 ans. On découvre que les rigidités nominales ont été influencées par les taux d’inflation qui ont prévalu, avec pour conséquence une plus grande fréquence de changements de prix dans les années 1920s et 1970s. De plus, chose surprenante, le processus d’intégration du marché de détail a suivi une trajectoire en U: plusieurs marchés domestiques étant davantage intégrés – en prenant comme mesure la dispersion moyenne des prix de détail – au milieu du siècle que dans les années 1990s. On examine aussi les liens entre rigidités nominales et dispersion des prix, et les résultats concordent avec ce que révèlent les données récentes.

Suggested Citation

  • Ross D. Hickey & David S. Jacks, 2011. "Nominal rigidities and retail price dispersion in Canada over the twentieth century," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 44(3), pages 749-780, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:canjec:v:44:y:2011:i:3:p:749-780
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5982.2011.01653.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5982.2011.01653.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1540-5982.2011.01653.x?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
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Christian Broda & David E. Weinstein, 2008. "Understanding International Price Differences Using Barcode Data," NBER Working Papers 14017, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Taylor, John B, 1980. "Aggregate Dynamics and Staggered Contracts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 88(1), pages 1-23, February.
    4. Engel, Charles & Rogers, John H, 1996. "How Wide Is the Border?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(5), pages 1112-1125, December.
    5. Stephen G. Cecchetti & Nelson C. Mark & Robert J. Sonora, 2002. "Price Index Convergence Among United States Cities," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 43(4), pages 1081-1099, November.
    6. Janet Ceglowski, 2003. "The law of one price: intranational evidence for Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 36(2), pages 373-400, May.
    7. J. C. Herbert Emery & Clint Levitt, 2002. "Cost of living, real wages and real incomes in thirteen Canadian cities, 1900–1950," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 35(1), pages 115-137, February.
    8. MarioJ. Crucini & Mototsugu Shintani & Takayuki Tsuruga, 2010. "The Law of One Price without the Border: The Role of Distance versus Sticky Prices," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 120(544), pages 462-480, May.
    9. Chris Minns & Mary MacKinnon, 2007. "The costs of doing hard time: a penitentiary‐based regional price index for Canada, 1883–1923," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(2), pages 528-560, May.
    10. 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.
    11. O'Connell, Paul G. J. & Wei, Shang-Jin, 2002. ""The bigger they are, the harder they fall": Retail price differences across U.S. cities," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 21-53, January.
    12. Konieczny, Jerzy D. & Skrzypacz, Andrzej, 2005. "Inflation and price setting in a natural experiment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(3), pages 621-632, April.
    13. Parsley, David C. & Wei, Shang-Jin, 2001. "Explaining the border effect: the role of exchange rate variability, shipping costs, and geography," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 87-105, October.
    14. Saul Lach, 2002. "Existence And Persistence Of Price Dispersion: An Empirical Analysis," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(3), pages 433-444, August.
    15. Fredrik Wulfsberg, 2009. "Price adjustments and inflation - evidence from Norwegian consumer price data 1975-2004," Working Paper 2009/11, Norges Bank.
    16. Mikhail Golosov & Robert E. Lucas Jr., 2007. "Menu Costs and Phillips Curves," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115, pages 171-199.
    17. Chen, L. L. & Devereux, J., 2003. "What can US city price data tell us about purchasing power parity?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 213-222, April.
    18. Emmanuel Dhyne & Luis J. Alvarez & Herve Le Bihan & Giovanni Veronese & Daniel Dias & Johannes Hoffmann & Nicole Jonker & Patrick Lunnemann & Fabio Rumler & Jouko Vilmunen, 2006. "Price Changes in the Euro Area and the United States: Some Facts from Individual Consumer Price Data," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(2), pages 171-192, Spring.
    19. Ahlin, Christian & Shintani, Mototsugu, 2007. "Menu costs and Markov inflation: A theoretical revision with new evidence," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 753-784, April.
    20. 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.
    21. 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.
    22. Calvo, Guillermo A., 1983. "Staggered prices in a utility-maximizing framework," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 383-398, September.
    23. Janet Ceglowski, 2003. "The law of one price: intranational evidence for Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 36(2), pages 373-400, May.
    24. Carlton, Dennis W, 1986. "The Rigidity of Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 637-658, September.
    25. Eyal Baharad & Benjamin Eden, 2004. "Price Rigidity and Price Dispersion: Evidence from Micro Data," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 7(3), pages 613-641, July.
    26. Patrick Coe & J.C. Herbert Emery, 2004. "The disintegrating Canadian labour market? The extent of the market then and now," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 37(4), pages 879-897, November.
    27. Etienne Gagnon, 2009. "Price Setting during Low and High Inflation: Evidence from Mexico," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(3), pages 1221-1263.
    28. Barron, John M. & Taylor, Beck A. & Umbeck, John R., 2004. "Number of sellers, average prices, and price dispersion," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 22(8-9), pages 1041-1066, November.
    29. Alan Kackmeister, 2007. "Yesterday's Bad Times Are Today's Good Old Times: Retail Price Changes Are More Frequent Today Than in the 1890s," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(8), pages 1987-2020, December.
    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. Giovanni Federico & Paul Sharp, 2013. "The cost of railroad regulation: the disintegration of American agricultural markets in the interwar period," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 66(4), pages 1017-1038, November.
    2. Bruce Cater & Byron Lew, 2018. "The impact of climate on the law of one price: A test using North American food prices from the 1920s," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(4), pages 1191-1220, November.
    3. Crucini, Mario J. & Shintani, Mototsugu & Tsuruga, Takayuki, 2015. "Noisy information, distance and law of one price dynamics across US cities," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 52-66.
    4. James MacGee & Chris Hajzler, 2012. "Retail Price Differences across U.S. and Canadian Cities during the Interwar Period," 2012 Meeting Papers 1126, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    5. Mario J. Crucini & Mototsugu Shintani & Takayuki Tsuruga, 2020. "A Behavioral Explanation for the Puzzling Persistence of the Aggregate Real Exchange Rate," NBER Working Papers 27420, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Visockytė Ligita, 2018. "Price Rigidity in Norway in the Nineteenth Century," Ekonomika (Economics), Sciendo, vol. 97(1), pages 32-46, January.
    7. David Fielding & Christopher Hajzler & James (Jim) C. MacGee, 2017. "Price-Level Dispersion versus Inflation-Rate Dispersion: Evidence from Three Countries," Staff Working Papers 17-3, Bank of Canada.
    8. Bocionek, Milena & Anders, Sven M., 2012. "Estimating Price Rigidity in Vertically Differentiated Food Product Categories with Private Labels," Staff Paper Series 139931, University of Alberta, Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology.
    9. David Fielding & Christopher Hajzler & James Macgee, 2015. "Distance, Language, Religion, and the Law of One Price: Evidence from Canada and Nigeria," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(5), pages 1007-1029, August.
    10. Luca Macedoni, 2021. "Has the Euro Shrunk the Band? Relative Purchasing Power Parity Convergence in a Currency Union," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 123(2), pages 593-620, April.
    11. Boffa,Mauro & Varela,Gonzalo J., 2019. "Integration and Price Transmission in Key Food Commodity Markets in India," Policy Research Working Paper Series 8755, The World Bank.
    12. Ayman Mnasri & Beverly Lapham, 2023. "A competitive search approach to exchange rate pass-through," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 76(1), pages 153-201, July.

    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. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    5. Franz Ruch & Neil Rankin & Stan du Plessis, 2016. "Decomposing inflation using micropricelevel data South Africas pricing dynamics," Working Papers 7353, South African Reserve Bank.
    6. Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson, 2013. "Price Rigidity: Microeconomic Evidence and Macroeconomic Implications," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 5(1), pages 133-163, May.
    7. Marco Bonomo & Carlos Carvalho, 2010. "Imperfectly Credible Disinflation under Endogenous Time‐Dependent Pricing," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(5), pages 799-831, August.
    8. Cavallo, Alberto & Rigobon, Roberto, 2011. "The Distribution of the Size of Price Changes," Working Papers 2011-011, Banco Central de Reserva del Perú.
    9. Alvarez González, Luis Julián, 2008. "What Do Micro Price Data Tell Us on the Validity of the New Keynesian Phillips Curve?," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 2, pages 1-36.
    10. B. Verhelst & D. Van Den Poel, 2010. "Price rigidity in Europe and the US: A comparative analysis using scanner data," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 10/684, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    11. Maarten Dossche, 2009. "Understanding Inflation Dynamics.Where Do We Stand?," Review of Business and Economic Literature, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Review of Business and Economic Literature, vol. 0(2), pages 209-227.
    12. Patrick Lünnemann & Thomas Y. Mathä, 2010. "Consumer price behaviour: evidence from Luxembourg micro data," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(2-3), pages 177-192.
    13. Bruce Cater & Byron Lew, 2018. "The impact of climate on the law of one price: A test using North American food prices from the 1920s," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(4), pages 1191-1220, November.
    14. Rongrong Sun, 2014. "Nominal rigidity and some new evidence on the New Keynesian theory of the output-inflation tradeoff," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 11(4), pages 575-597, December.
    15. 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.
    16. Carstensen, Kai & Schenkelberg, Heike, 2011. "Time- or State-Dependence? An Analysis of Inflation Dynamics using German Business Survey Data," Discussion Papers in Economics 12170, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    17. 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.
    18. Sheremirov, Viacheslav, 2020. "Price dispersion and inflation: New facts and theoretical implications," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 59-70.
    19. Elberg, Andrés, 2016. "Sticky prices and deviations from the Law of One Price: Evidence from Mexican micro-price data," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 191-203.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • N82 - Economic History - - Micro-Business History - - - U.S.; Canada: 1913-

    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:wly:canjec:v:44:y:2011:i:3:p:749-780. 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 Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1540-5982 .

    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.