IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rug/rugwps/10-684.html

Price rigidity in Europe and the US: A comparative analysis using scanner data

Author

Listed:
  • B. VERHELST

  • D. VAN DEN POEL

Abstract

This paper uses scanner data from two large retailers to offer new insights into the extent of price rigidity in Europe and the US. Recent empirical research in this field has made extensive use of monthly data to study price stickiness and to control for the impact of temporary sales. We show that the use of monthly data is potentially highly misleading. We employ scanner data in (bi)weekly frequency and highlight the importance of high frequency data in studying price rigidity. Regular prices show roughly the same degree of flexibility in Europe and the US, in line with recent empirical research, when we study monthly price series derived from our high frequency scanner data. This finding collapses, however, when the original scanner datasets in higher base frequency are examined. Regular prices are then far more flexible in the US than in Europe. This result is robust to the type of sales filter that we apply and the statistic used to capture price rigidity.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:rug:rugwps:10/684
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://wps-feb.ugent.be/Papers/wp_10_684.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Benjamin Verhelst & Dirk Van den Poel, 2014. "Deep habits in consumption: a spatial panel analysis using scanner data," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 959-976, November.
    2. Paolo Pasimeni, 2014. "An Optimum Currency Crisis," European Journal of Comparative Economics, Cattaneo University (LIUC), vol. 11(2), pages 173-204, December.
    3. B. Verhelst & D. Van Den Poel, 2012. "Implicit Contracts and Price Stickiness: Evidence from Customer-Level Scanner Data," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 12/776, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    4. Bocionek, Milena & Anders, Sven M. & Kiesel, Kristin, 2012. "Estimating price rigidity in vertically differentiated food product categories with private labels," 2012 Annual Meeting, August 12-14, 2012, Seattle, Washington 124529, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    5. Luca Cacchiarelli & Alessandro Sorrentino, 2019. "Pricing Strategies in the Italian Retail Sector: The Case of Pasta," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 8(4), pages 1-13, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C33 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • D4 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design
    • E3 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles
    • L66 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing - - - Food; Beverages; Cosmetics; Tobacco

    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:rug:rugwps:10/684. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Nathalie Verhaeghe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ferugbe.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.