Sales and the (Mis)measurement of price level fluctuations

Philip Glandon

Journal of Macroeconomics, 2018, vol. 58, issue C, 60-77

Abstract: I use scanner data to investigate whether temporary price reductions (“sales”) play a role in aggregate price adjustment. Sales have a large and variable impact on the growth rate of average price paid. Even after aggregating across goods and markets, the monthly growth rate of average price paid is four times as volatile as the regular price because of changes in sale frequency, depth, and quantity response. The impact of sales is positively correlated with the local unemployment rate during recessions. The CPI item indexes used to deflate nominal consumption expenditure do not fully account for variation in sale activity. I show evidence that real consumption growth was understated during the last two recessions.

JEL-codes: E31 L16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0164070418300302
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:jmacro:v:58:y:2018:i:c:p:60-77

DOI: 10.1016/j.jmacro.2018.08.012

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Macroeconomics is currently edited by Douglas McMillin and Theodore Palivos

More articles in Journal of Macroeconomics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().