Before 1978, most of the U.S. domestic copper production and an important fraction of the imports were traded at a price set by the major U.S. producers. Simultaneously, the rest of the world was trading copper at prices determined in auction markets. This two-price system ended in 1978, when...

This paper examines whether the Mortensen-Pissarides matching model can account for the housing markets facts, most of all the empirical anomaly known as ‘price dispersion’. Our main finding is that the model can account for the three basic facts of housing market, without any restrictive...

This paper examines the effects of seller uncertainty over their home value on the housing market. Using evidence from a new dataset on home listings and transactions, I first show that sellers do not have full information about current period demand conditions for their homes. I incorporate...

In many markets consumers have imperfect information about the utility they derive from the products that are on offer and need to visit stores to find the product that is the most preferred. This paper develops a discrete-choice model of demand with optimal consumer search. Consumers first...

Most empirical studies on price setting that use micro data focus on advanced industrial countries. In this paper we analyze the experience of an emerging economy, Slovakia, using a large micro-level dataset that accounts for a substantial part of the consumer price index (about 5 million...

Employing a unique dataset that covers almost 6000 informal enterprises from six West African urban centers, this paper examines the backward and forward linkages of these enterprises to the formal sector. We first provide a descriptive analysis of the existing formal-informal linkages. It turns...

This paper studies asymmetric price responses of individual firms, via daily retail prices of almost all gasoline stations in the Netherlands and suggested prices of the five largest oil companies over more than two years. I find that 38% of the stations respond asymmetrically to changes in the...

Firms adjust to differences in market size and demand uncertainty by changing the frequency and size of their export shipments. In our inventory model, transportation costs and optimal shipment frequency are determined on the basis of demand as well as inventory and per shipments costs. Using a...

Historical anecdotes of new investors being drawn into a booming asset market, only to suffer when the market turns, abound. While the role of investor contagion in asset bubbles has been explored extensively in the theoretical literature, causal empirical evidence on the topic is virtually...

Studies employing micro price data to examine the extent of international goods market integration tend to find that borders induce arbitrage-impeding transaction costs which contribute to segment national markets. Analyzing household scanner price data from the three euro area countries...