Inflation is painful, for firms, customers, employees, and society. But careful study of periods of hyperinflation point to ways that firms can adapt. In particular, companies need to think about how to change prices regularly and cheaply - because constant price changes can ultimately be very,...

We study the link between price points and price rigidity, using two datasets: weekly scanner data, and Internet data. We find that: “9” is the most frequent ending for the penny, dime, dollar and ten-dollar digits; the most common price changes are those that keep the price endings at...

We study the price adjustment practices and provide quantitative measurement of the managerial and customer costs of price adjustment using data from a large U.S. industrial manufacturer and its customers. We find that price adjustment costs are a much more complex construct than the existing...

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...

We combine two data sets to study price rigidity. The first consists of weekly time series of retail, wholesale, and spot prices for twelve products. These time series contain two exogenous cost shocks. We find that prices exhibit more rigidity in response to the second shock than the first. The...

In this study, we empirically examine the extent of price rigidity using a unique store-level time series data set—consisting of (i) actual retail transaction prices, (ii) actual wholesale transaction prices which represent both the retailers’ costs and the prices received by manufacturers,...

We study the price adjustment practices and provide quantitative measurement of the managerial and customer costs of price adjustment using data from a large U.S. industrial manufacturer and its customers. We find that price adjustment costs are a much more complex construct than the existing...

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...

Asymmetric pricing is the phenomenon where prices rise more readily than they fall. We articulate, and provide empirical support for, a theory of asymmetric pricing in wholesale prices. In particular, we show how wholesale prices may be asymmetric in the small but symmetric in the large, when...