IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/7311.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Understanding How Price Responds to Costs and Production

Author

Listed:
  • Mark Bils
  • Yongsung Chang

Abstract

The importance of sticky prices in business cycle fluctuations has been debated for many years. But we argue, based on a large empirical literature from the 1950's and 60's, that it is necessary to distinguish the response of price to an increase in factor prices from its response to an increase in marginal cost generated by an expansion in production. Consistent with that earlier literature, we find for 450 U.S. manufacturing industries that prices do respond more to increases in costs driven by changes in factor prices than to increases in marginal cost precipitated by expansions in output. We explore two models that can potentially explain these findings. Both break the link between price and marginal cost, thereby generating what one might naively interpret as average-cost pricing. The first is driven by firms pricing to limit entry. The second is driven by firms pricing to limit non-price competition within their market.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark Bils & Yongsung Chang, 1999. "Understanding How Price Responds to Costs and Production," NBER Working Papers 7311, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:7311
    Note: EFG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w7311.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lucas, Robert E, Jr, 1970. "Capacity, Overtime, and Empirical Production Functions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 60(2), pages 23-27, May.
    2. Miles S. Kimball & John G. Fernald & Susanto Basu, 2006. "Are Technology Improvements Contractionary?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1418-1448, December.
    3. John Shea, 1993. "Do Supply Curves Slope Up?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 108(1), pages 1-32.
    4. Jordi Gali, 1999. "Technology, Employment, and the Business Cycle: Do Technology Shocks Explain Aggregate Fluctuations?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(1), pages 249-271, March.
    5. Julio J. Rotemberg & Michael Woodford, 1991. "Markups and the Business Cycle," NBER Chapters,in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1991, Volume 6, pages 63-140 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Hall, Robert E, 1988. "The Relation between Price and Marginal Cost in U.S. Industry," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(5), pages 921-947, October.
    7. Carlton, Dennis W, 1979. "Contracts, Price Rigidity, and Market Equilibrium," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(5), pages 1034-1062, October.
    8. R. L. Hall & C. J. Hitch, 1939. "Price Theory And Business Behaviour," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 0(1), pages 12-45.
    9. Alan S. Blinder, 1994. "On Sticky Prices: Academic Theories Meet the Real World," NBER Chapters,in: Monetary Policy, pages 117-154 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Rotemberg, Julio J, 1982. "Sticky Prices in the United States," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(6), pages 1187-1211, December.
    11. 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.
    12. Oliver Jean Blanchard, 1987. "Aggregate and Individual Price Adjustment," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 18(1), pages 57-122.
    13. Franco Modigliani, 1958. "New Developments on the Oligopoly Front," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 66, pages 215-215.
    14. Eric J. Bartelsman & Wayne Gray, 1996. "The NBER Manufacturing Productivity Database," NBER Technical Working Papers 0205, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Victor Zarnowitz, 1962. "Unfilled Orders, Price Changes, and Business Fluctuations," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number zarn62-1.
    16. Basu, Susanto & Fernald, John G, 1997. "Returns to Scale in U.S. Production: Estimates and Implications," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(2), pages 249-283, April.
    17. Carlton, Dennis W, 1986. "The Rigidity of Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 637-658, September.
    18. Bils, Mark, 1987. "The Cyclical Behavior of Marginal Cost and Price," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(5), pages 838-855, December.
    19. Robert E. Hall, 1980. "Employment Fluctuations and Wage Rigidity," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 11(1, Tenth ), pages 91-142.
    20. Mark Bils & Peter J. Klenow, 1998. "Using Consumer Theory to Test Competing Business Cycle Models," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(2), pages 233-261, April.
    21. Victor Zarnowitz, 1962. "Front matter to "Unfilled Orders, Price Changes, and Business Fluctuations"," NBER Chapters,in: Unfilled Orders, Price Changes, and Business Fluctuations, pages -4 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    22. Julio J. Rotemberg, 1982. "Monopolistic Price Adjustment and Aggregate Output," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 49(4), pages 517-531.
    23. Roberts, John M & Stockton, David J & Struckmeyer, Charles S, 1994. "Evidence on the Flexibility of Prices," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 76(1), pages 142-150, February.
    24. Robert E. Hall, 1991. "Labor Demand, Labor Supply, and Employment Volatility," NBER Chapters,in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1991, Volume 6, pages 17-62 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    25. Robert E. Lucas & Jr., 1967. "Adjustment Costs and the Theory of Supply," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 75, pages 321-321.
    26. Walter Y. Oi, 1962. "Labor as a Quasi-Fixed Factor," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 70, pages 538-538.
    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. Yoonsoo Lee & Toshihiko Mukoyama, 2008. "Entry, Exit, and Plant-Level Dynamics over the Business Cycle," Working Papers 08-17, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    2. Eugenio Gaiotti & Alessandro Secchi, 2004. "Is there a cost channel of monetary policy transmission? An investigation into the pricing behaviour of 2,000 firms," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 525, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    3. Matteo Bugamelli & Silvia Fabiani & Enrico Sette, "undated". "The age of the dragon: Chinese competition and the pricing behavior of the Italian firms," Working Papers 4, Department of the Treasury, Ministry of the Economy and of Finance.
    4. Rui Castro & Gian Luca Clementi & Yoonsoo Lee, 2015. "Cross Sectoral Variation in the Volatility of Plant Level Idiosyncratic Shocks," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(1), pages 1-29, March.
    5. Yoonsoo Lee, 2005. "The importance of reallocations in cyclical productivity and returns to scale: evidence from plant-level data," Working Paper 0509, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    6. Robert E. Hall, 2009. "By How Much Does GDP Rise If the Government Buys More Output?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 40(2 (Fall)), pages 183-249.
    7. Erol, Turan, 2005. "Corporate debt and output pricing in developing countries: Industry-level evidence from Turkey," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 503-520, April.
    8. Olivier Blanchard, 2009. "The State of Macro," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 209-228, May.
    9. Lundin, Magnus & Gottfries, Nils & Lindström, Tomas, 2004. "Price and Investment Dynamics: An Empirical Analysis of Plant Level Data," Working Paper Series 2004:7, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    10. Saygın Şahinöz & Bedriye Saraçoğlu, 2011. "How do firms adjust their prices in Turkey? Micro-level evidence," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 40(3), pages 601-621, May.
    11. Rui Castro & Gian Luca Clementi & Yoonsoo Lee, 2008. "Cross-sectoral variation in firm-level idiosyncratic risk," Working Paper 0812, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    12. Virgiliu Midrigan, 2005. "Is Firm Pricing State or Time-Dependent? Evidence from US Manufacturing," Macroeconomics 0511005, EconWPA.
    13. Yash P. Mehra, 2004. "The output gap, expected future inflation and inflation dynamics: another look," Working Paper 04-06, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    14. Faiz ur, rehman & Wasim, shahid malik, 2010. "A structural VAR (SVAR) approach to cost channel of monetary policy," MPRA Paper 32349, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 09 Feb 2011.
    15. Banerjee, Anindya & Russell, Bill, 2005. "Inflation and measures of the markup," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 289-306, June.
    16. Matteo Bugamelli & Silvia Fabiani & Enrico Sette, 2010. "The pro-competitive effect of imports from China: an analysis of firm-level price data," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 737, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    17. Krogscheepers, Corris & Gossel, Sean Joss, 2015. "Input cost and international demand effects on the production of platinum group metals in South Africa," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 193-201.
    18. Erol, Turan, 2003. "Capital structure and output pricing in a developing country," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 109-115, January.
    19. Yash P. Mehra, 2004. "Predicting the recent behavior of inflation using output gap-based Phillips curves," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue Sum, pages 65-88.
    20. repec:eee:moneco:v:92:y:2017:i:c:p:112-129 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Banerjee, Anindya & Russell, Bill, 2004. "A reinvestigation of the markup and the business cycle," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 267-284, March.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E3 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:7311. 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: () or (Joanne Lustig). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.