We use detailed micro data to document a causal response of local retail price to changes in house prices, with elasticities of 15%-20% across housing booms and busts. Notably, these price responses are largest in zip codes with many homeowners, and non-existent in zip codes with mostly renters....

The Producer Price Index (PPI) for the United States suggests that semiconductor prices have barely been falling in recent years, a dramatic contrast from the rapid declines reported from the mid-1980s to the early 2000s. This slowdown in the rate of decline is puzzling in light of evidence that...

Until recently the Consumer Price Index consisted solely of "matched model" component indexes. The latter are constructed by BLS personnel who visit stores and compare prices of goods with the same set of characteristics over successive periods. This procedure is subject to a selection bias....

A common approach to measuring price changes is to look at the change of the expenditure needed to purchase a fixed basket of goods. It is well-known that this approach suffers from problems and creates several biases in the measurement of price changes faced by consumers. Substitution and...

This paper examines the importance of income effects in purchase decisions for every-day products by analyzing the effect of gasoline prices on grocery expenditures. Using detailed scanner data from a large grocery chain as well as data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES), we show that...

We explore the role of strategic price-discrimination by retailers for price determination and inflation dynamics. We model two types of customers, "loyals" who buy only one brand and do not strategically time purchases, and "shoppers" who seek out low-priced products both across brands and...

This study is an attempt to evaluate the effects of product and labour market regulations on industry productivity through their various impacts on changes in production prices and wages. In a first stage, the estimation of a regression equation on an industry*country panel, with controls for...

There remains considerable debate in both the theoretical and empirical literature about the differences in the cyclical dynamics of firms by firm size. Some have hypothesized that small firms are more sensitive to cycles while others have posited that larger firms are more sensitive....

We present estimates of 4 and 8 firm concentration ratios by industry and in weighted aggregate form for the manufacturing sector for Chinese enterprises for 2002 and 2007. These are then compared to available estimates for the same years and industrial classification for the US. These...

Union membership displayed a ∩-shaped pattern over the 20th century, while the distribution of income sketched a ∪. A model of unions is developed to analyze these phenomena. There is a distribution of firms in the economy. Firms hire capital, plus skilled and unskilled labor. Unionization...