This paper studies how changes in energy input costs for U.S. manufacturers affect the relative welfare of manufacturing producers and consumers (i.e. incidence). In doing so, we develop a partial equilibrium methodology to estimate the incidence of input taxes that can simultaneously account...

We develop a dynamic model of a small open economy that trades commodities whose world prices are subject to realistic random fluctuations, and study the implications of monetary policy alternatives. The model is much more flexible than those of previous studies, especially in allowing to...

This paper investigates the use of trimmed means as high-frequency estimators of" inflation. The known characteristics of price change distributions, specifically the observation" that they generally exhibit high levels of kurtosis, imply that simple averages of price data are" unlikely to...

In this paper we focus on a mystery we uncovered while undertaking a detailed audit of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price index (PPl). We summarize our puzzle as follows. From January 1984 through December 1989.the BLS price Index for SIC 28341 (prescription pharmaceutical...

Extending a methodology developed by Lichtenberg and Griliches (1989), we examine the extent of measurement error in two independent indicators of price change: the producer price index (PPI) and the U.S. Census Bureau's unit value relative (UVR). Estimation of factor analytic models is improved...

In this paper we investigate the incidence of measurement errors in two independent estimates of long-term price change, within the framework of "multiple indicators" models of price measurement. We develop estimates of the measurement-error variances associated with both the Producer Price...

In a broad class of sticky price models the non-neutrality of nominal shocks is encoded by a simple sufficient statistic: the ratio of the kurtosis of the size-distribution of price changes over the frequency of price changes. We test this theoretical prediction using data for a large number of...

This paper starts by documenting a new fact that consumer price index (CPI) and producer price index (PPI) used to move in tandem within a given country around the world, but start to diverge after 2000. Understanding the source of divergence is important as it potentially affects optimal...

China's rapid rise in the global economy following its 2001 WTO entry has raised questions about its economic impact on the rest of the world. In this paper, we focus on the U.S. market and potential consumer benefits. We find that the China trade shock reduced the U.S. manufacturing price index...