In this paper, we argue that differences in the cost structure across sectors play an important role in the decision of firms to adjust their prices. We develop a menu-cost model of pricing in which retail firms intermediate trade between producers and consumers. An important facet of our...

We present a dynamic quantity setting game, where players may continuously adjust their quantity targets, but incur convex adjustment costs when they do so. These costs allow players to use quantity targets as a partial commitment device. We show that the equilibrium path of such a game is...

Using an aggregative games approach, we analyze horizontal mergers in a model of multiproduct-firm price competition with nested CES or nested logit demands. We show that the Herfindahl index provides an adequate measure of the welfare distortions introduced by market power, and that the induced...

This paper presents new results on the size, frequency, and synchronization of price changes for twelve selected retail goods over the past 35 years. Three basic facts about the data are uncovered: first, nominal prices are typically fixed for more than one year although the time between changes...

The menu-cost interpretation of sticky prices implies that the probability of a price change should depend on the past history of prices and fundamentals only through the gap between the current price and the frictionless price. We find that this prediction is broadly consistent with the...

We propose a simple framework to assess the costs of nominal price adjustment using stock market returns. We document that, after monetary policy announcements, the conditional volatility rises more for firms with stickier prices than for firms with more flexible prices. This differential...

This paper develops a model where firms make state-dependent decisions on both pricing and acquisition of information. It is shown that when information is not perfect, menu costs combined with the aggregate price level serving as an endogenous public signal generate rigidity in price setting...

New Keynesian models of price setting under monopolistic competition involve two kinds of inefficiency: the price level is too high because firms ignore an aggregate demand externality, and when there are costs of changing prices, price stickiness may be an equilibrium response to changes in...

We give a thorough analytic characterization of a large class of sticky-price models where the firm's price setting behavior is described by a generalized hazard function. Such a function provides a tractable description of the firm's price setting behavior and allows for a vast variety of...

This paper develops a model of unemployment fluctuations. The model keeps the architecture of the general-disequilibrium model of Barro and Grossman (1971) but takes a matching approach to the labor and product markets instead of a disequilibrium approach. On the product and labor markets, both...