Asymmetric Wholesale Pricing: Theory and Evidence

Asymmetric pricing is the phenomenon where prices rise more readily than they fall. We articulate, and provide empirical support for, a theory of asymmetric pricing in wholesale prices. In particular, we show how wholesale prices may be asymmetric in the small but symmetric in the large, when retailers face costs of price adjustments. Such retailers will not adjust prices for small changes in their costs. Upstream manufacturers then see a region of inelastic demand where small wholesale price changes do not translate into commensurate retail price changes. The implication is asymmetric – small wholesale increases are more profitable because manufacturers will not lose customers from higher retail prices; yet, small wholesale decreases are less profitable, because these will not create lower retail prices, hence no extra revenue from greater sales. For larger changes, this asymmetry at wholesale vanishes as the costs of changing prices are compensated by increases in retailers’ revenue that result from correspondingly large retail price changes. We first present a formal economic model of a channel with forward looking retailers facing costs of price adjustment to derive the testable propositions. Next, we test these on manufacturer prices in a supermarket scanner dataset to find support for our theory. We discuss the contributions of the results for the asymmetric pricing, distribution channels and cost of price adjustment literatures, and implications for public policy.Asymmetric Pricing, Channel Pricing, Costs of Price Adjustment, Menu Costs, Wholesale Prices, Channels of Distribution, Retailing, Scanner Data

Asymmetric Price Adjustment in the Small

Analyzing a large weekly retail transaction price dataset, we uncover a surprising regularity—small price increases occur more frequently than small price decreases for price changes of up to about 10 cents, while there is no such asymmetry for larger price changes. The asymmetry holds for the entire sample and for individual categories. We find that while inflation can explain some of the asymmetry, inflation is not the whole story as the asymmetry holds even after excluding inflationary periods from the data, and even for products whose price had not increased over the eight-year period. The findings hold for different measures of inflation and also after allowing for lagged price adjustments. We offer a consumer-based explanation for these findings.Asymmetric Price Adjustment; Price Rigidity; Rational Inattention; Rational Ignorance;

Asymmetric Price Adjustment "in the Small:" An Implication of Rational Inattention

Analyzing scanner price data that cover 27 product categories over an eight-year period from a large Mid-western supermarket chain, we uncover a surprising regularity in the data—small price increases occur more frequently than small price decreases. We find that this asymmetry holds for price changes of up to about 10 cents, on average. The asymmetry disappears for larger price changes. We document this finding for the entire data set, as well as for individual product categories. Further, we find that the asymmetry holds even after excluding from the data the observations pertaining to inflationary periods, and after allowing for various lengths of lagged price adjustment. The findings are insensitive also to the measure of price level used to measure inflation (the PPI or the CPI). To explain these findings, we extend the implications of the literature on rational inattention to individual price dynamics. Specifically, we argue that processing and reacting to price change information is a costly activity. An important implication of rational inattention is that consumers may rationally choose to ignore—and thus not to respond to—small price changes, creating a “range of inattention” along the demand curve. This range of consumer inattention, we argue, gives the retailers incentive for asymmetric price adjustment “in the small.” These incentives, however, disappear for large price changes, because large price changes are processed by consumers and therefore trigger their response. Thus, no asymmetry is observed “in the large.” An additional implication of rational inattention is that the extent of the asymmetry found “in the small” might vary over the business cycle: it might diminish during recessions and strengthen during expansions. We find that the data are indeed consistent with these predictions. An added contribution of the paper is that our theory may offer a possible explanation for the presence of small price changes, which has been a long-standing puzzle in the literature.Asymmetric Price Adjustment, Rational Inattention, Cost and Benefit of Information Acquiring and Processing, Price Rigidity

When Little Things Mean a Lot: On the Inefficiency of Item Pricing Laws

Item pricing laws (IPLs) require a price tag on every item sold by a retailer. We study IPLs and assess their efficiency by quantifying their costs and comparing them to previously documented benefits. On the cost side, we posit that IPLs should lead to higher prices because they increase the cost of pricing as well as the cost of price adjustment. We test this prediction using data collected from large supermarket chains in the Tri-State area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, which offer a unique setting because these states vary in their use of IPLs, but otherwise offer geographical proximity with each other and similar markets, supermarket chains, and socioeconomic environments. We find that IPL store prices are higher by about 20¢–25¢ or 8.0%–9.6% per item on average, in comparison to non-IPL stores. As a control, we use data from stores that are exempt from IPL requirements (because they use electronic shelf labels), and find that their prices fall between IPL and non-IPL store prices. To assess the efficiency of IPLs, we compare these costs to existing measures of the benefits of IPLs which are based on measurements of the frequency and the magnitude of pricing errors the IPLs are supposed to prevent. We find that the costs of IPLs are an order of magnitude higher than the upper bound of these estimate benefits.Item Pricing Law; Cost of Item Pricing Law; Cost of Price Adjustment; Menu Cost; Retail Pricing;

When Little Things Mean a Lot: On the Inefficiency of Item Pricing Laws

We study item-pricing laws (which require that each item in a store be individually marked with a price sticker) and examine and quantify their costs and benefits. On the cost side, we argue that item-pricing laws increase the retailers’ costs, forcing them to raise prices. We test this prediction using data on retail prices from large supermarket chains in the Tri-State area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. The Tri-States offer a unique setting—a natural experiment—to study item-pricing laws because the States vary in their use of item-pricing laws, but otherwise offer similar markets and chains operating in a close proximity to each other in a relatively homogenous socioeconomic environment. We use two datasets, one emphasizing the breadth in coverage across products and the other across stores. We find consistent evidence across products, product categories, stores, chains, states, and sampling periods, that the prices at stores facing item-pricing laws are higher than the prices at stores not facing the item pricing laws by about 25¢ or 9.6% per item. We also have data from supermarket chains that would be subject to item-pricing laws but are exempted from item pricing requirement because they use costly electronic shelf label systems. Using this data as a control, we find that the electronic shelf label store prices fall between the item-pricing law and non-item- pricing law store prices: they are lower than the item-pricing law store prices by about 15¢ per item on average, but are higher than the non- item-pricing law store prices by about 10¢ per item on average. On the benefit side, we study the frequency and the magnitude of supermarket pricing errors, which the item-pricing laws are supposed to prevent. We quantify the benefits of the IPLs by conservatively assuming that they successfully accomplish their mission of preventing all price mistakes. Comparing the costs of item-pricing laws to their benefits, we find that the item-pricing law costs are at least an order of magnitude higher than the benefits.Item Pricing Laws, Costs of Item Pricing Laws, Benefits of Item Pricing Laws, Cost of Price Adjustment, Pricing Accuracy, Electronic Shelf Label System, Pricing Regulation, Cost of Pricing, Supermarket Chains

Charged anisotropic strange stars in Finslerian geometry

We investigate a simplified model for the strange stars in the framework of Finslerian spacetime geometry, composed of charged fluid. It is considered that the fluid consisting of three flavor quarks including a small amount of non-interacting electrons to maintain the chemical equilibrium and assumed that the fluid is compressible by nature. To obtain the simplified form of charged strange star we considered constant flag curvature. Based on geometry, we have developed the field equations within the localized charge distribution. We considered that the strange quarks distributed within the stellar system are compiled with the MIT bag model type of equation of state (EOS) and the charge distribution within the system follows a power law. We represent the exterior spacetime by the Finslerian Ressiner-Nordstr{\"o}m space-time. The maximum anisotropic stress is obtained at the surface of the system. Whether the system is in equilibrium or not, has been examined with respect to the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff (TOV) equation, Herrera cracking concept, different energy conditions and adiabatic index. We obtain that the total charge is of the order of 10$^{20}$ C and the corresponding electric field is of around 10$^{22}$ V/m. The central density and central pressure vary inversely with the charge. Varying the free parameter (charge constant) of the model, we find the generalized mass-radius variation of strange stars and determine the maximum limited mass with the corresponding radius. Furthermore, we also considered the variation of mass and radius against central density respectively.Comment: 21 pages, 13 figures, 4 table