Why Don't Prices Rise During Periods of Peak Demand? Evidence from Scanner Data

Peter Rossi (), Judith Chevalier and Anil Kashyap

Yale School of Management Working Papers from Yale School of Management

Abstract: We examine retail and wholesale prices for a large supermarket chain over seven and one-half years. We find that prices fall on average during seasonal demand peaks for a product, largely due to changes in retail margins. Retail margins for specific goods fall during peak demand periods for that good, even if these periods do not coincide with aggregate demand peaks for the retailer. This is consistent with "loss leader" models of retailer competition. Models stressing cyclical demand elasticities or cyclical firm conduct are less consistent with our findings. Manufacturer behavior plays a limited role in the counter-cyclicality of prices.

Keywords: Pricing; Seasonality; Retail; Competition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E32 L13 L81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-09-10
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=319966 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Why Don't Prices Rise During Periods of Peak Demand? Evidence from Scanner Data (2003)
Working Paper: Why Don't Prices Rise During Periods of Peak Demand? Evidence from Scanner Data (2000)
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ysm:somwrk:ysm291

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Yale School of Management Working Papers from Yale School of Management Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().