Sticky prices: why firms hesitate to adjust the price of their goods

Price stickiness—the tendency of prices to remain constant despite changes in supply and demand—has been linked to firms’ unwillingness to pay the costs entailed in setting, implementing, and advertising new prices. However, there is little consensus on the size and importance of these “repricing costs.” Taking the imported beer market as their subject, the authors of this study find repricing costs to be markedly higher for manufacturers than for retailers and conclude that, at the wholesale level, these costs are a significant deterrent to price adjustment.Prices ; Supply and demand ; Beer industry

How Rigid Are Producer Prices?

How rigid are producer prices? Conventional wisdom is that producer prices are more rigid than and so play less of an allocative role than do consumer prices. In the 1987-2008 micro data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for the PPI, we find that producer prices for finished goods and services in fact exhibit roughly the same rigidity as do consumer prices that include sales, and substantially less rigidity than do consumer prices that exclude sales. Large firms change prices two to three times more frequently than do small firms, and by smaller amounts, particularly for price decreases. Longer price durations are associated with larger price changes, though there is considerable heterogeneity in this relationship. Long-term contracts are associated with somewhat greater price rigidity for goods and services, though the differences are not dramatic. The size of price decreases plays a key role in inflation dynamics, while the size of price increases does not. The frequencies of price increases and decreases tend to move together, and so cancel one another out.Producer prices, consmer prices, contracts

A Structural Approach to Identifying the Sources of Local-Currency Price Stability

The inertia of the local-currency prices of traded goods in the face of exchange-rate changes is a well-documented phenomenon in International Economics. This paper develops a structural model to identify the sources of this local-currency price stability and applies it to micro data from the beer market. The empirical procedure exploits manufacturers’ and retailers’ first-order conditions in conjunction with detailed information on the frequency of price adjustments following exchange-rate changes to quantify the relative importance of local non-traded cost components, markup adjustment by manufacturers and retailers, and nominal price rigidities in the incomplete transmission of such changes to prices. We find that, on average, approximately 60% of the incomplete exchange rate pass-through is due to local non-traded costs; 8% to markup adjustment; 30% to the existence of own-brand price adjustment costs, and 1% to the indirect/strategic effect of such costs, though these results vary considerably across individual brands according to their market shares.

A Framework for Identifying the Sources of Local-Currency Price Stability with an Empirical Application

The inertia of the local-currency prices of traded goods in the face of exchange-rate changes is a well-documented phenomenon in International Economics. This paper develops a framework for identifying the sources of local-currency price stability. The empirical approach exploits manufacturers’ and retailers’ first-order conditions in conjunction with detailed information on the frequency of price adjustments in response to exchange-rate changes, in order to quantify the relative importance of markup adjustment by manufacturers and retailers, local-cost non-traded components, and nominal price rigidities, in the incomplete transmission of exchange-rate changes to prices. The approach is applied to micro data from the beer market. We find that on average, 54.1% of the incomplete exchange rate pass-through is due to local non-traded costs; 33.7% to markup adjustment; and 12.2% to the existence of price adjustment costs.currency prices, exchange rates

Patient Sex and Physician Adherence to Treatment Guidelines for Non-Purulent Cellulitis

In 2015, participating US Emergency Departments (EDs) reported approximately 2.8 million visits related to skin and soft tissue infections (SSTIs). Studies indicate that there may be disparities by patient sex in physician treatment guideline adherence rates as a result of a gender bias during physician-patient interactions; however, only two epidemiologic studies have investigated the role of patient sex in guideline adherence rates for SSTIs. These prior studies were limited in size and covariate assessment. Thus, the magnitude and direction of the effect of patient sex is uncertain, warranting further research. Therefore, we conducted a large prospective study to elucidate the role that patient sex plays in guideline adherence rates among physicians for non-purulent cellulitis at two UMass Memorial Health Care Group EDs in 2017. Data on treatment and sex was abstracted from electronic medical records. Compliance with treatment guidelines was based on 2014 Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA) guidelines. Adjusted multinomial regressions indicated that female patient sex was associated with lower prevalence of overtreatment (POR=0.72, 95%CI: 0.57-0.92). In contrast, female physician sex was significantly associated with higher prevalence of overtreatment (POR=1.48, 95%CI: 1.16-1.87), but did not affect the relationship of patient sex with overtreatment (P-interaction=0.80). Awareness of differential treatment by patient sex may improve physician adherence to guidelines. This study contributes to a growing body of literature elucidating the role of sex in medical decision making and is the first to account for both patient and physician sex as well as relevant covariates in studies regarding cellulitis treatment

Using literature to educate students about bullying

The purpose of this study was to investigate how using literature to educate students about bullying would support their understandings about bullying and how to address it. This study was conducted at Osage Elementary School in Voorhees, New Jersey. Twenty-one third graders voluntarily participated in this study. An initial and final survey, four discussions and four surveys following the discussions along with a teacher research journal were used in this study to gather data. A qualitative approach was utilized to analyze and draw conclusions from the research. The data showed student understanding about bullying changed over the course of the study. The data yielded five distinct findings. Anonymity allows students to achieve a level of comfort to share information with their teacher. Students were able to see themselves as having a role in issues around bullying. Critical texts help to engage students in discussions about critical issues. Students related to the characters and events in the stories. The stories center around the bullying of the main characters. A learning community was established that allowed the students to better determine the severity of a disciplinary problem. One implication that emerged from this study is a need for further research to determine the long term effects literature has on the perspectives of the students about bullying

Where have all the species gone?: An interdisciplinary unit on endangered species

Where Have All the Species Gone? is an interdisciplinary thematic unitdesigned to educate, interest, and inspire students to seek solutions to the problems associated with the causes for endangered species. The lessons cover the areas of mathematics, language arts, American history, science, art and technology. The unit can be taught in its whole over three to four weeks or individual lessons can be infused into existing middle/junior high school curriculum throughout the school year

The How of Enforcing the Fourteenth Amendment: How the Rehnquist Court\u27s Treatment of Implementation, Not Interpretation, Is the True Post-Boerne Failing

This article argues that the severe limits the Rehnquist Court imposed on Congress’ power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment did not stem primarily from the Court’s treatment of Congress’ interpretive powers in City of Boerne v. Flores, as most commentators have assumed, but rather from the Court’s treatment of Congress’ assessments regarding implementation in the cases that followed Boerne (Kimel, Garrett, Hibbs, and Lane). The article provides a new framework for assessing Congress’ power to pass a law under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment – a framework that adheres, in the main, to the Court’s 14§5 doctrine in Boerne and earlier cases, but that teases out the crucial differences between interpretation and implementation. The article goes on to apply this framework to the Court’s key 14§5 rulings. This process reveals that, even if one were to accept the Court’s lack of deference to Congress’ interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, considerable room still exists for Congress to choose the means of implementing that Amendment. A 14§5 jurisprudence that embraces judicial deference to Congress’ views on implementation is compatible with both City of Boerne and with the key 14§5 decisions of the Warren Court. Such a jurisprudence is presented in this article

How rigid are producer prices?

Conventional wisdom suggests that producer prices are more rigid than consumer prices and therefore play less of a role in the allocation of goods and services. Analyzing 1987-2008 microdata collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for the producer price index, we find that producer prices for finished goods and services in fact exhibit roughly the same rigidity as consumer prices that include sales and substantially less rigidity than consumer prices that exclude them. Moreover, large firms change prices two to three times more frequently than small firms do, and by smaller amounts, particularly in the case of price decreases. Longer price durations are associated with larger price changes, although there is considerable heterogeneity in this relationship. Long-term contracts are associated with somewhat greater price rigidity for goods and services, although the differences are not dramatic. The size of price decreases plays a key role in inflation dynamics, while the size of price increases does not. The frequencies of price increases and decreases tend to move together and so cancel one another out