In this paper we argue that pricing is all about price changes, and that the costs of price changes are often simultaneously subtle and substantial. We discuss a framework to deal with the dynamics of changing prices. This framework incorporates customer interpretations of price changes, an...

Using weekly retail transaction scanner price data from a large U.S. supermarket chain, we find significantly higher retail price rigidity for private label products than for nationally branded products during the Christmas and Thanksgiving holiday periods relative to the rest of the year. The...

The Thanksgiving-Christmas holiday period is a major sales period for U.S. retailers. Due to higher store traffic, tasks such as restocking shelves, handling customers' questions and inquiries, running cash registers, cleaning, and bagging, become more urgent during holidays. As a result, the...

There has been increasing interest in understanding how firms undertake nonprice adjustment activities, especially in situations where prices may be rigid despite changes in market conditions. Using scanner price data for over 4,500 different food products from a large U.S. supermarket chain, we...

Using unique retail and wholesale price data for 4,532 products carried by a major Midwestern grocery retailer, we find evidence of significant retail price rigidity during the Thanksgiving through Christmas holiday period relative to the rest of the year. We suggest that this pattern of holiday...

We use U.S. county level data (3,058 observations) from 1970 to 1998 to explore the relationship between economic growth and the extent of government employment at three levels: federal, state and local. We find that increases in federal, state, and local government employments are all...

We use U.S. county data (3,058 observations) and 41 conditioning variables to study growth and convergence. Using OLS and 3SLS-IV we report on the full sample and metro, non-metro, and 5 regional samples: 1) OLS yields convergence rates around 2 percent; 3SLS yields 6-8 percent; 2) Convergence...

Analyzing a large weekly retail transaction price dataset, we uncover a surprising regularity small price increases occur more frequently than small price decreases for price changes of up to about 10 cents, while there is no such asymmetry for larger price changes. The asymmetry holds for the...

This note outlines: 1) Why sigma-convergence may not accompany beta-convergence; 2) Cites evidence of beta-convergence in the U.S.; 3) Demonstrates that sigma-convergence does not hold across the U.S. or within most U.S. states; and 4) Demonstrates the robustness of this finding to increases in...

We use U.S. county-level data (3,058 observations) from 1970 to 1998 to explore the relationship between economic growth and the size of government at three levels: federal, state, and local. Using 3SLS-IV estimation we find that the size of federal, state, and local government all either...