The roles of price points and menu costs in price rigidity

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Knotek II, Edward S.
• 署名单位: Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Cleveland
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF MONETARY ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3932
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jmoneco.2024.103559
• 发表日期: 2024
• 关键词: Price rigidity; menu costs; Price points; Nine -ending prices

摘要

Macroeconomic models often generate nominal price rigidity via menu costs. In scanner databases, (1) price points, embodied in nine-ending prices, account for two-thirds of prices; (2) at the conclusion of sales, post-sale prices return to their pre-sale levels more than three-fourths of the time; and (3) such memory around sales is stronger if the pre-sale price was a price point. Extending a canonical menu cost model to allow for price points, I estimate an incentive to set nine-ending prices two orders of magnitude larger than the menu costs. The choice of a mechanism for price rigidity matters for aggregate dynamics.