IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/4806.html

Pricing in International Markets: Lessons From The Economist

Author

Listed:
  • Atish R. Ghosh
  • Holger C. Wolf

Abstract

Export firms are often assumed to stabilize destination market prices in the face of nominal exchange rate changes in order to protect market share. We show that standard tests of such pricing to market fail to discriminate against the alternative hypothesis of menu costs. As a case study, we examine the characteristics and determinants of changes in the cover prices of The Economist magazine in a sample of twelve countries over the floating rate period. We find that, while the law of one price fails, there is no evidence of systematic attempts to offset nominal exchange rate movements. Instead, the findings are consistent with menu cost driven pricing behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Atish R. Ghosh & Holger C. Wolf, 1994. "Pricing in International Markets: Lessons From The Economist," NBER Working Papers 4806, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:4806
    Note: ITI IFM
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w4806.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Delgado, Francisco A., 1991. "Hysteresis, menu costs, and pricing with random exchange rates," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 461-484, December.
    2. 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.
    3. Baldwin, Richard, 1988. "Hyteresis in Import Prices: The Beachhead Effect," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(4), pages 773-785, September.
    4. Roland Benabou, 1988. "Search, Price Setting and Inflation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 55(3), pages 353-376.
    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. Atish Ghosh & Holger Wolf, 2001. "Imperfect Exchange Rate Passthrough: Strategic Pricing and Menu Costs," CESifo Working Paper Series 436, CESifo.
    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. Debelle, Guy & Lamont, Owen, 1997. "Relative Price Variability and Inflation: Evidence from U.S. Cities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(1), pages 132-152, February.
    4. Fishman, Arthur, 1992. "Search Technology, Staggered Price-Setting, and Price Dispersion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(1), pages 287-298, March.
    5. 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.
    6. Erwan Gautier, 2008. "Les ajustements micro conomiques des prix : une synth se des mod les Théoriques et résultats empiriques," Working papers 211, Banque de France.
    7. Bonomo, Marco, 2000. "Are One-Sided S,s Rules Useful Proxies For Optimal Pricing Rules?," Brazilian Review of Econometrics, Sociedade Brasileira de Econometria - SBE, vol. 20(1), May.
    8. Leif Danziger, 2008. "Adjustment Costs, Inventories and Output," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 110(3), pages 519-542, September.
    9. Watanabe, Makoto, 2008. "Inflation, price competition, and consumer search technology," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(12), pages 3780-3806, December.
    10. Franz, Wolfgang, 1990. "Hysteresis in Economic Relationships: An Overview," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 15(2), pages 109-125.
    11. Agnès Bénassy‐Quéré & Lionel Fontagné & Horst Raff, 2011. "Exchange‐rate Misalignments in Duopoly: The Case of Airbus and Boeing," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(4), pages 623-641, April.
    12. DI BARTOLOMEO, Giovanni & SERPIERI, Carolina, 2023. "Optimal monetary policy and the vintage-dependent price and wage Phillips curves: An international comparison," Working Papers 2023004, University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    13. T.R.L. Fry & R.D. Brooks & Br. Comley & J. Zhang, 1993. "Economic Motivations for Limited Dependent and Qualitative Variable Models," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 69(2), pages 193-205, June.
    14. Yuko Imura, 2023. "Reassessing Trade Barriers with Global Production Networks," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 51, pages 77-116, December.
    15. Webber, A., 1999. "Newton's Gravity Law and Import Prices in the Asia Pacific," Economics Working Papers WP99-12, School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
    16. Deborah L. Swenson, 2007. "Competition and the location of overseas assembly," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 40(1), pages 155-175, February.
    17. Jonathan Haskel & Holger Wolf, 2001. "The Law of One Price—A Case Study," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 103(4), pages 545-558, December.
    18. 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.
    19. Chenzi Xu, 2022. "Reshaping Global Trade: The Immediate and Long-Run Effects of Bank Failures [“Shift-Share Designs: Theory and Inference,”]," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 137(4), pages 2107-2161.
    20. Baumgartner, Josef & Glatzer, Ernst & Rumler, Fabio & Stiglbauer, Alfred, 2005. "How frequently do consumer prices change in Austria? Evidence from micro CPI data," Working Paper Series 523, European Central Bank.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D4 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design
    • F31 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Exchange

    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:nbr:nberwo:4806. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.