Price Setting with menu cost for Multi-product firms

Fernando E. Alvarez and Francesco Lippi

No 17923, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We model the decisions of a multi-product firm that faces a fixed "menu" cost: once it is paid, the firm can adjust the price of all its products. We characterize analytically the steady state firm's decisions in terms of the structural parameters: the variability of the flexible prices, the curvature of the profit function, the size of the menu cost, and the number of products sold. We provide expressions for the steady state frequency of adjustment, the hazard rate of price adjustments, and the size distribution of price changes, all in terms of the structural parameters. We study analytically the impulse response of aggregate prices and output to a monetary shock. The size of the output response and its duration increase with the number of products, they more than double as the number of products goes from 1 to ten, quickly converging to the ones of Taylor's staggered price model.

JEL-codes: E31 E4 E52 E60 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-com, nep-dge and nep-mac
Note: EFG
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Published as Price setting with menu cost for multi-product firms, with Francesco Lippi, 2013. forthcoming, Econometrica.

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Related works:
Journal Article: Price Setting With Menu Cost for Multiproduct Firms (2014)
Working Paper: Price setting with menu cost for multi-product firms (2013)
Working Paper: Price setting with menu cost for multi-product firms (2012)
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