Further Evidence from Survey Data on Australian Manufacturing Price Changes

Three data sets from two different quarterly surveys have been used in estimating six standard models of price change behaviour. Results for Total Manufacturing Industry, for all three data sets, show prices respond to both actual cost movements and commodity market excess demand conditions. For most ASIC two-digit industries, prices respond rapidly to actual cost movements, and for many industries they also respond directly to excess demand conditions. No single excess demand measure is appropriate for all industries. The magnitude of orders and inventories influences is very small, but capacity utilization contributions seem far from trivial. Industry results are frequently sensitive to the survey used and/or to the method used to weight individual firm's responses