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The Distribution of the Size of Price Changes

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  • Cavallo, Alberto

    (MIT Sloan.)

  • Rigobon, Roberto

    (MIT Sloan & NBER.)

Abstract

Different theories of price stickiness have distinct implications on the number of modes in the distribution of price changes. We formally test for the number of modes in the price change distribution of 36 supermarkets, spanning 22 countries and 5 continents. We present results for three modality tests: the two best-known tests in the statistical literature, Hartigan's Dip and Silverman's Bandwidth, and a test designed in this paper, called the Proportional Mass test (PM). Three main results are uncovered. First, when the traditional tests are used, unimodality is rejected in about 90 percent of the retailers. When we used the PM test, which reduces the impact of smaller modes in the distribution and can be applied to test for modality around zero percent, we still reject unimodality in two thirds of the supermarkets. Second, category-level heterogeneity can account for about half of the PM test's rejections of unimodality. Finally, a simulation of the model in Alvarez, Lippi, and Paciello (2010) shows that the data is consistent a combination of both time and state-dependent pricing behaviors.

Suggested Citation

  • Cavallo, Alberto & Rigobon, Roberto, 2011. "The Distribution of the Size of Price Changes," Working Papers 2011-011, Banco Central de Reserva del Perú.
    • Handle: RePEc:rbp:wpaper:2011-011
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    Cited by:

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    3. Alberto Cavallo & Brent Neiman & Roberto Rigobon, 2014. "Currency Unions, Product Introductions, and the Real Exchange Rate," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 129(2), pages 529-595.
    4. Oriol Valles Codina, 2020. "Economic Production as Life: A Classical Approach to Computational Social Science," Working Papers 2001, New School for Social Research, Department of Economics.
    5. Mr. Camilo E Tovar Mora & Mr. Balazs Csonto & Yuxuan Huang, 2019. "Is Digitalization Driving Domestic Inflation?," IMF Working Papers 2019/271, International Monetary Fund.
    6. Alberto Cavallo & Roberto Rigobon, 2016. "The Billion Prices Project: Using Online Prices for Measurement and Research," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 30(2), pages 151-178, Spring.
    7. Fernando Alvarez & Francesco Lippi, 2014. "Price Setting With Menu Cost for Multiproduct Firms," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82(1), pages 89-135, January.
    8. Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Viacheslav Sheremirov & Oleksandr Talavera, 2018. "Price Setting in Online Markets: Does IT Click?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 16(6), pages 1764-1811.
    9. Fabrice Defever & Alejandro Riano, 2017. "Twin peaks," Discussion Papers 2017-15, University of Nottingham, GEP.
    10. Alberto Cavallo, 2018. "Scraped Data and Sticky Prices," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 100(1), pages 105-119, March.
    11. S. Dupraz, 2017. "A Kinked-Demand Theory of Price Rigidity," Working papers 656, Banque de France.
    12. Erwan Gautier & Ronan Le Saout, 2015. "The Dynamics of Gasoline Prices: Evidence from Daily French Micro Data," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(6), pages 1063-1089, September.
    13. Erwan Gautier & Ronan Le Saout, 2015. "L'ajustement microéconomique des prix des carburants en France," Working Papers hal-01195759, HAL.
    14. Choudhary, M. Ali & Faheem, Abdul & Hanif, M. Nadim & Naeem, Saima & Pasha, Farooq, 2016. "Price setting & price stickiness: A developing economy perspective," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 44-61.
    15. 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.
    16. Steffen Ahrens & Stephen Sacht, 2014. "Estimating a high-frequency New-Keynesian Phillips curve," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 607-628, March.
    17. Kota Watanabe & Tsutomu Watanabe, 2017. "Price Rigidity at Near-Zero Inflation Rates: Evidence from Japan," UTokyo Price Project Working Paper Series 076, University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Economics.
    18. Banerjee, Shesadri & Bhattacharya, Rudrani, 2017. "Micro-level Price Setting Behaviour in India: Evidence from Group and Sub-Group Level CPI-IW Data," Working Papers 17/217, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.

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    JEL classification:

    • E00 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - General
    • E3 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles

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