Belief-dependent pricing decisions

How do inflation and idiosyncratic cost expectations affect firms’ price-adjusting decisions? Evidence on micro price adjustment has emphasized that price changes follow a fixed adjustment schedule, i.e., time-dependent pricing, or that they respond to the state of the economy, i.e., state-dependent pricing. We use firm expectation survey data to argue that price-adjustment decisions are also belief-dependent. While controlling for time- and state-dependent factors, we find that for the decision to adjust prices, inflation expectations do not play any role, but firms’ beliefs about their overall costs do. This highlights a robust correlation between idiosyncratic expectations and economic decisions. We show that the expectation channel is heterogeneous across firms and operates with a delay. When studying firms’ expected magnitude of price changes, the relevance of current inflation expectations is recovered apart from costs. Our findings provide empirical support for the belief-driven nature of pricing decisions and their economic implications.