IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/onb/oenbmp/y2010i1b3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Relationship between Competition and Inflation

Author

Listed:
  • Jürgen Janger

    (Austrian Institute of Economic Research)

  • Philipp Schmidt-Dengler

    (The London School of Economics and Political Science)

Abstract

This study supplements previous empirical work on the relationship between the average rate of inflation and competition by adding a new approach for estimating markups and investigating the annual rate of inflation, price variance and price levels. Subject to certain qualifications, markups can be interpreted as indicators for competition intensity. Our calculation, conducted for 15 countries and 34 sectors, exhibits major differences between the sectors within one country and among the same sectors across various countries. The markups are used to produce estimates of the relationship between competition and inflation (average and annual rates), price levels and price variance. Although a significantly negative correlation with inflation and price variance is evident for the period from 1991 to 2005, competition loses its explanatory power for inflation rates when longer time spans are considered. In terms of economic policy, this study confirms the findings of previous works which identify the intensification of competition as a temporary means of curbing price increases. A new finding from this study is the evidence for the inflation-stabilizing effect of intensified competition, which is caused by its negative correlation with price variance. The fact that no significant relation between price level and competition intensity was found may be attributable to insufficient data.

Suggested Citation

  • Jürgen Janger & Philipp Schmidt-Dengler, 2010. "The Relationship between Competition and Inflation," Monetary Policy & the Economy, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank), issue 1, pages 53-65.
    • Handle: RePEc:onb:oenbmp:y:2010:i:1:b:3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.oenb.at/dam/jcr:e3a4c575-2758-4b2a-90a5-85fcf539fc94/mop_2010_q1_analyses_03_tcm16-190403.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Heinrichs, Katrin & Wagner, Helmut, 2019. "Positive trend inflation and the Phillips curve – A tale of two slopes and various impulse responses," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 283-307.
    2. Christian Reiner & Christian Bellak, 2023. "Hat die ökonomische Macht von Unternehmen in Österreich zugenommen? Teil 2," Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft - WuG, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik, vol. 49(2), pages 17-76.
    3. Klaus S. Friesenbichler & Agnes Kuegler & Andreas Reinstaller, 2021. "Does value chain integration dampen producer price developments? Evidence from the European Union," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(1), pages 89-106, January.
    4. Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia (CNMC), 2023. "Guide. Competition against inflation: How competition and efficient regulation help protect the purchasing power of consumers," Colección Estudios de Mercado G-2022-02_ENG, Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia (CNMC).
    5. Leonardo Ciambezi & Mattia Guerini & Mauro Napoletano & Andrea Roventini, 2023. "Accounting for the Multiple Sources of Inflation: an Agent-Based Model Investigation," GREDEG Working Papers 2023-14, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France, revised Jun 2024.
    6. J. Jonckheere & H. Zimmer, 2017. "Services inflation : The Belgian exception," Economic Review, National Bank of Belgium, issue i, pages 93-109, June.
    7. Jürgen Janger & Julia Bock-Schappelwein & Thomas Horvath & Ina Meyer, 2013. "Monitoring Austria's Efforts Within the Europe 2020 Strategy," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 46950, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    competition; inflation; markup;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • L16 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Industrial Organization and Macroeconomics; Macroeconomic Industrial Structure
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:onb:oenbmp:y:2010:i:1:b:3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Rita Glaser-Schwarz (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/oenbbat.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.