We study the link between price points and price rigidity, using two datasets containing over 100 million observations. We find that (i) 9 is the most frequently used price-ending for the penny, dime, dollar and ten-dollar digits, (ii) 9-ending prices are between 24%-73% less likely to change in...

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...

This paper makes three contributions. First, I construct annual time series of gross domestic investment and national saving in the United States for the 1897-1949 period using historical component series. I compare the qualitative and quantitative properties of the newly constructed series with...

The marketplace, along with its price system, is the single most important institution in a western-style free enterprise economy. The ability of prices to adjust to changes in supply and demand conditions enables the market to function efficiently and lies behind the magical invisible hand...

The price system, the adjustment of prices to changes in market conditions, is the primary mechanism by which markets function and by which the three most basic questions get answered: what to produce, how much to produce and for whom to produce. To the behaviour of price and price system,...

There has been increasing interest in understanding how firms undertake non-price 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 US supermarket chain, we...

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...

Item pricing laws (IPLs) require a price tag on every item sold by a retailer. We study IPLs and assess their efficiency by examining and quantifying their costs and comparing them to their measurable benefits. On the cost side, we posit that IPLs should lead to higher prices because they...

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 best-seller, it is because the book conveys messages, feelings, and events the readers can relate to. In other...

The literature on costs of price adjustment has long argued that changing prices is a complex and costly process. In fact, some authors have suggested that we should think of firms' price-setting activities as "producing" prices, similar to the way firms use production processes to produce goods...