Capital-Market Imperfections and Countercyclical Markups: Theory and Evidence

Judith Chevalier () and David Scharfstein

American Economic Review, 1996, vol. 86, issue 4, pages 703-25

Abstract: During recessions, output prices seem to rise relative to wages and raw-material prices. One explanation is that imperfectly competitive firms compete less aggressively during recessions. That is, markups of price over marginal cost are countercyclical. The authors present a model of countercyclical markups based on capital-market imperfections. During recessions, liquidity-constrained firms boost short-run profits by raising prices to cut their investments in market share. The authors provide evidence from the supermarket industry in support of this theory. During regional and macroeconomic recessions, more financially constrained supermarket chains raise their prices relative to less financially constrained chains. Copyright 1996 by American Economic Association.

Date: 1996
View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8282%2819960 ... O%3B2-V&origin=repec full text (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to JSTOR subscribers. See http://www.jstor.org for details.

Related works:
Working Paper: Capital Market Imperfections and Countercyclical Markups: Theory and Evidence (1994)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:86:y:1996:i:4:p:703-25

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.aeaweb.org/subscribe.html

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is edited by Robert Moffitt

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().