IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Log in (now much improved!) to save this paper

How frequently do prices change? Evidence based on the micro data underlying the Belgian CPI

Author Info

  • Luc Aucremanne

    ()

    (National Bank of Belgium, Research Department)

  • Emmanuel Dhyne

    ()

    (National Bank of Belgium, Research Department)

Abstract

This paper examines the degree of price rigidity in Belgian consumer prices, using a large database. As to the observed degree of rigidity, the results reveal a substantial amount of heterogeneity, not only across but also within product categories. While prices turn out to be perfectly flexible for some product categories, they tend to be very sticky for others. Each month, nearly 17 p.c. of the consumer prices change on average and the median duration of a price spell is close to 13 months. A substantial subset of our results is compatible with state-dependent pricing, while other results suggest that some timedependency exists as well. The majority of price changes are price increases, but price decreases are not uncommon, except for services. The size of price changes is important. Price changes do not seem to be highly synchronised across price-setters within relatively homogenous product categories.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: https://www.nbb.be/doc/oc/repec/reswpp/wp44.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Paper provided by National Bank of Belgium in its series Working Paper Research with number 44.

as
in new window

Length: 71 pages
Date of creation: Apr 2004
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:nbb:reswpp:200404-1
Contact details of provider: Postal:
Boulevard de Berlaimont 14, B-1000 Bruxelles

Phone: (+ 32) (0) 2 221 25 34
Fax: (+ 32) (0) 2 221 31 62
Web page: https://www.nbb.be/
Email:


More information through EDIRC

Keywords: consumer prices; price rigidity; state-dependent pricing; time-dependent pricing; staggered pricing;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Theory
  • D40 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - General
  • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

as in new window
  1. Aucremanne, L., 2000. "The Use of Robust Estimators as Measures of Core Inflation," Papers 2, Warwick - Development Economics Research Centre.
  2. repec:crs:ecosta:es386b is not listed on IDEAS
  3. Anil K Kashyap, 1995. "Sticky Prices: New Evidence from Retail Catalogs," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 110(1), pages 245-274.
  4. Aoki, Kosuke, 2001. "Optimal monetary policy responses to relative-price changes," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 55-80, August.
  5. Jordi Galí & Mark Gertler & J. David López-Salido, 2000. "European Inflation Dynamics," Working Papers 0020, Banco de España;Working Papers Homepage.
  6. Carlton, Dennis W, 1986. "The Rigidity of Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 637-58, September.
  7. Luc Aucremanne & Guy Brys & Mia Hubert & Peter J. Rousseeuw & Anja Struyf, 2002. "Inflation, relative prices and nominal rigidities," Working Paper Research 20, National Bank of Belgium.
  8. Aucremanne, L. & Cornille, D., 2001. "Attractive Prices and Euro-Rounding Effects on Inflation," Papers 17, Warwick - Development Economics Research Centre.
  9. Stephen G. Cecchetti, 1985. "Staggered Contracts and the Frequency of Price Adjustment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 100(Supplemen), pages 935-959.
  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. Lach, Saul & Tsiddon, Daniel, 1992. "The Behavior of Prices and Inflation: An Empirical Analysis of Disaggregated Price Data," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(2), pages 349-89, April.
  12. Lach, Saul & Tsiddon, Daniel, 1996. "Staggering and Synchronization in Price-Setting: Evidence from Multiproduct Firms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(5), pages 1175-96, December.
  13. Jerzy D. Konieczny & Andrzej Skrzypacz, 2000. "Inflation and Price Setting in a Natural Experiment," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1132, Econometric Society.
  14. Buckle, Robert A. & Carlson, John A., 2000. "Menu costs, firm size and price rigidity," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 59-63, January.
  15. 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.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.

as in new window


Cited by:
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbb:reswpp:200404-1. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ()

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.