IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tur/wpapnw/099.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Inflation and Price Flexibility

Author

Listed:
  • Petrella Ivan

    (Department of Economics, Social Studies, Applied Mathematics and Statistics, and Collegio Carlo Alberto, University of Turin; University of Warwick and CEPR)

  • Santoro Emiliano

    (Catholic University of Milan)

  • Winkelmann Yannik

    (University of Tubingen)

Abstract

Using UK consumer price microdata, we report that aggregate price flexibility varies substantially over time and induces significant non-linearity in inflation. In a regime of high flexibility, the half-life of inflation drops by 50% and its volatility rises considerably. Such asymmetry arises naturally from state-dependent pricing, for which we find ample evidence in the data, particularly following the Great Recession. Neglecting this property may lead to a systematic underprediction of inflation, as seen in the post-Pandemic inflation surge. Tracking real-time movements in price flexibility is crucial for assessing inflation dynamics and to inform monetary policy decisions.

Suggested Citation

  • Petrella Ivan & Santoro Emiliano & Winkelmann Yannik, 2025. "Inflation and Price Flexibility," Working papers 099, Department of Economics, Social Studies, Applied Mathematics and Statistics (Dipartimento di Scienze Economico-Sociali e Matematico-Statistiche), University of Torino.
    • Handle: RePEc:tur:wpapnw:099
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bemservizi.unito.it/repec/tur/wpapnw/m99.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2025
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mark Bils, 2009. "Do Higher Prices for New Goods Reflect Quality Growth or Inflation?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(2), pages 637-675.
    2. Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson & Patrick Sun & Daniel Villar, 2018. "The Elusive Costs of Inflation: Price Dispersion during the U.S. Great Inflation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(4), pages 1933-1980.
    3. Lein, Sarah M., 2010. "When do firms adjust prices? Evidence from micro panel data," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(6), pages 696-715, September.
    4. Ivana Komunjer, 2007. "Asymmetric power distribution: Theory and applications to risk measurement," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(5), pages 891-921.
    5. Chernozhukov, Victor & Hong, Han, 2003. "An MCMC approach to classical estimation," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 115(2), pages 293-346, August.
    6. Nicoletta Berardi & Erwan Gautier & Hervé Le Bihan, 2015. "More Facts about Prices: France Before and During the Great Recession," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 47(8), pages 1465-1502, December.
    7. Luo, Shaowen & Villar, Daniel, 2021. "The price adjustment hazard function: Evidence from high inflation periods," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    8. Granger, Clive W. J. & Terasvirta, Timo, 1993. "Modelling Non-Linear Economic Relationships," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198773207, Decembrie.
    9. Reifschneider, David & Tulip, Peter, 2019. "Gauging the uncertainty of the economic outlook using historical forecasting errors: The Federal Reserve’s approach," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 1564-1582.
    10. Dedola, Luca & Henkel, Lukas & Höynck, Christian & Osbat, Chiara & Santoro, Sergio, 2024. "What does new micro price evidence tell us about inflation dynamics and monetary policy transmission?," Economic Bulletin Articles, European Central Bank, vol. 3.
    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. Petrella, Ivan & Santoro, Emiliano & Simonsen, Lasse de la Porte, 2018. "Time-varying Price Flexibility and Inflation Dynamics," CEPR Discussion Papers 13027, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Huw Dixon & Kul Luintel & Kun Tian, 2020. "The Impact of the 2008 Crisis on UK Prices: What We Can Learn from the CPI Microdata," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 82(6), pages 1322-1341, December.
    3. Dixon, Huw D. & Grimme, Christian, 2022. "State-dependent or time-dependent pricing? New evidence from a monthly firm-level survey: 1980–2017," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    4. Bonciani, Dario, 2014. "Uncertainty shocks: it's a matter of habit," MPRA Paper 59370, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Erwan Gautier & Cristina Conflitti & Riemer P. Faber & Brian Fabo & Ludmila Fadejeva & Valentin Jouvanceau & Jan-Oliver Menz & Teresa Messner & Pavlos Petroulas & Pau Roldan-Blanco & Fabio Rumler & Se, 2024. "New Facts on Consumer Price Rigidity in the Euro Area," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 16(4), pages 386-431, October.
    6. Yasufumi Gemma & Takushi Kurozumi & Mototsugu Shintani, 2023. "Trend Inflation and Evolving Inflation Dynamics:A Bayesian GMM Analysis," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 51, pages 506-520, December.
    7. Ray, Sourav & Snir, Avichai & Levy, Daniel, 2023. "Retail Pricing Format and Rigidity of Regular Prices," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, pages 1-1.
    8. Britta Gehrke & Brigitte Hochmuth, 2021. "Counteracting Unemployment in Crises: Non‐Linear Effects of Short‐Time Work Policy," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 123(1), pages 144-183, January.
    9. Vito Polito & Yunyi Zhang, 2021. "Tackling Large Outliers in Macroeconomic Data with Vector Artificial Neural Network Autoregression," CESifo Working Paper Series 9395, CESifo.
    10. Gautier, Erwan & Karadi, Peter & Conflitti, Cristina & Fabo, Brian & Fadejeva, Ludmila & Fuss, Catherine & Kosma, Theodora & Jouvanceau, Valentin & Martins, Fernando & Menz, Jan-Oliver & Messner, Tere, 2023. "Price adjustment in the euro area in the low-inflation period: evidence from consumer and producer micro price data," Occasional Paper Series 319, European Central Bank.
    11. Cristina Conflitti & Riemer P. Faber & Brian Fabo & Ludmila Fadejeva & Erwan Gautier & Valentin Jouvanceau & Jan-Oliver Menz & Teresa Messner & Pavlos Petroulas & Pau Roldan-Blanco & Fabio Rumler & Se, 2022. "New Facts on Consumer Price Rigidity in the Euro Area (Erwan Gautier, Cristina Conflitti, Riemer P. Faber, Brian Fabo, Ludmila Fadejeva, Valentin Jouvanceau, Jan-Oliver Menz, Teresa Messner, Pavlos Pe," Working Papers 240, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank).
    12. Xavier Jaravel & Erick Sager, 2018. "What are the Price Effects of Trade? Evidence from the U.S. and Implications for Quantitative Trade Models," Economic Working Papers 506, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
    13. Lee, Dong Jin & Kim, Tae-Hwan & Mizen, Paul, 2021. "Impulse response analysis in conditional quantile models with an application to monetary policy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    14. de Castro, Luciano & Galvao, Antonio F. & Montes-Rojas, Gabriel, 2020. "Quantile selection in non-linear GMM quantile models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 195(C).
    15. Fernando Alvarez & Andrea Ferrara & Erwan Gautier & Hervé Le Bihan & Francesco Lippi, 2021. "Empirical Investigation of a Sufficient Statistic for Monetary Shocks," Working papers 839, Banque de France.
    16. Tae-Hwan Kim & Dong Jin Lee & Paul Mizen, 2020. "Impulse Response Analysis in Conditional Quantile Models and an Application to Monetary Policy," Working papers 2020rwp-164, Yonsei University, Yonsei Economics Research Institute.
    17. Popp, Aaron & Zhang, Fang, 2016. "The macroeconomic effects of uncertainty shocks: The role of the financial channel," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 319-349.
    18. Pascal Seiler & Barbara Rudolf, 2022. "Price Setting Before and During the Pandemic: Evidence from Swiss Consumer Prices," KOF Working papers 22-506, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
    19. Luo, Shaowen & Villar, Daniel, 2023. "Propagation of shocks in an input-output economy: Evidence from disaggregated prices," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 26-46.
    20. Jaravel, Xavier & Sager, Erick, 2019. "What are the price effects of trade? Evidence from the US for quantitative trade models," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103402, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inflation; Price flexibility; Monetary policy; Ss models;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E30 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes

    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:tur:wpapnw:099. 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: Daniele Pennesi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dstorit.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.