We study the implications of rational inattention for individual price dynamics. Analyzing scanner data that cover 29 product categories over a eight-year period from a large Midwestern supermarket chain, we uncover a surprising regularity in the data - small price increases occur more...

We utilize county-level data to explore growth determination in the U.S. and possible heterogeneity in growth determination across individual states. The data includes over 3,000 cross-sectional observations and 39 demographic control variables. We use a consistent two stage least squares...

We utilize county-level data to explore the different roles of different types of human capital accumulation in U.S. growth determination. The data includes over 3,000 cross-sectional observations and 39 demographic control variables. The large number of observations provides enough degrees of...

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...

We report that the price of a 6.5oz Coke was 5 cents from 1886 until about 1959. Thus we are documenting a nominal price rigidity that lasted more than 70 years! The case of Coca-Cola is particularly interesting because during the 70-year period there were substantial changes in the soft drink...

Economic organization of the imaginary worlds depicted in popular literary works may be viewed as a mirror to public opinion on the economic organization of life. If a book becomes a bestseller, it is because the book conveys messages, feelings, and events the readers can relate to. In other...

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...

Existence of a cointegration relationship between two time series in the time domain imposes restrictions on the series zero-frequency behavior in terms of their squared coherence, phase, and gain in the frequency domain. I derive these restrictions by studying cross-spectral properties of a...

In a classic article, Granger (1966) asserted that most economic time series measured in level have spectra that exhibit a smooth declining shape with considerable power at very low frequencies. There has been no systematic attempt to examine Granger's assertion. We estimate output level spectra...