IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bca/bocawp/24-31.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Price Discounts and Cheapflation During the Post-Pandemic Inflation Surge

Author

Listed:
  • Alberto Cavallo
  • Oleksiy Kryvtsov

Abstract

We study how within-store price variation changes with inflation, and whether households exploit it to attenuate the inflation burden. We use micro price data for food products sold by 91 large multi-channel retailers in 10 countries between 2018 and 2024. Measuring unit prices within narrowly defined product categories, we analyze two key sources of variation in prices within a store: temporary price discounts and differences across similar products. Price changes associated with discounts grew at a much lower average rate than regular prices, helping to mitigate the inflation burden. By contrast, cheapflation—a faster rise in prices of cheaper goods relative to prices of more expensive varieties of the same good—exacerbated it. Using Canadian Homescan Panel data, we estimate that spending on discounts reduced the change in the average unit price by 4.1 percentage points, but expenditure switching to cheaper brands raised it by 2.8 percentage points.

Suggested Citation

  • Alberto Cavallo & Oleksiy Kryvtsov, 2024. "Price Discounts and Cheapflation During the Post-Pandemic Inflation Surge," Staff Working Papers 24-31, Bank of Canada.
  • Handle: RePEc:bca:bocawp:24-31
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2024/08/staff-working-paper-2024-31/
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/swp2024-31.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alberto Cavallo, 2017. "Are Online and Offline Prices Similar? Evidence from Large Multi-channel Retailers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(1), pages 283-303, January.
    2. Oleksiy Kryvtsov, 2016. "Is there a quality bias in the Canadian CPI? Evidence from microdata," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 49(4), pages 1401-1424, November.
    3. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Gee Hee Hong, 2015. "The Cyclicality of Sales, Regular and Effective Prices: Business Cycle and Policy Implications," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(3), pages 993-1029, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Tao Chen & Peter Levell & Martin O'Connell, 2024. "Cheapflation and the rise of inflation inequality," IFS Working Papers W36, Institute for Fiscal Studies.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Carvalho, Carlos & Kryvtsov, Oleksiy, 2021. "Price selection," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 56-75.
    2. Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Viacheslav Sheremirov & Oleksandr Talavera, 2018. "Price Setting in Online Markets: Does IT Click?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 16(6), pages 1764-1811.
    3. Neslin, Scott A., 2022. "The omnichannel continuum: Integrating online and offline channels along the customer journey," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 98(1), pages 111-132.
    4. Erwan Gautier & Cristina Conflitti & Riemer P. Faber & Brian Fabo & Ludmila Fadejeva & Valentin Jouvanceau & Jan-Oliver Menz & Teresa Messner & Pavlos Petroulas & Pau Roldan-Blanco & Fabio Rumler & Se, 2024. "New Facts on Consumer Price Rigidity in the Euro Area," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 16(4), pages 386-431, October.
    5. Alberto Cavallo & Robert C. Feenstra & Robert Inklaar, 2023. "Product Variety, the Cost of Living, and Welfare across Countries," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(4), pages 40-66, October.
    6. José Anson & Mauro Boffa, 2018. "Consumer Arbitrage in Cross-Border E-commerce," RSCAS Working Papers 2018/17, European University Institute.
    7. Alex Nikolsko‐Rzhevskyy & Oleksandr Talavera & Nam Vu, 2023. "The flood that caused a drought," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 61(4), pages 965-981, October.
    8. Patrick Bajari & Zhihao Cen & Victor Chernozhukov & Manoj Manukonda & Jin Wang & Ramon Huerta & Junbo Li & Ling Leng & George Monokroussos & Suhas Vijaykunar & Shan Wan, 2023. "Hedonic prices and quality adjusted price indices powered by AI," CeMMAP working papers 08/23, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    9. Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson, 2013. "Price Rigidity: Microeconomic Evidence and Macroeconomic Implications," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 5(1), pages 133-163, May.
    10. Chen, Natalie & Juvenal, Luciana, 2018. "Quality and the Great Trade Collapse," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 59-76.
    11. Baker, Scott R. & Johnson, Stephanie & Kueng, Lorenz, 2024. "Financial returns to household inventory management," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    12. Ray, Sourav & Snir, Avichai & Levy, Daniel, 2023. "Retail Pricing Format and Rigidity of Regular Prices," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, pages 1-1.
    13. Drenik, Andrés & Perez, Diego J., 2020. "Price setting under uncertainty about inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 23-38.
    14. Shen, Yinhai & Zhang, Qing & Zhang, Zhichao & Ma, Xinyu, 2022. "Omnichannel retailing return operations with consumer disappointment aversion," Operations Research Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 9(C).
    15. Mingming Shi & Jun Zhou & Zhou Jiang, 2019. "Consumer heterogeneity and online vs. offline retail spatial competition," Frontiers of Business Research in China, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 1-19, December.
    16. Etienne Gagnon & David López-Salido, 2020. "Small Price Responses to Large Demand Shocks," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(2), pages 792-828.
    17. Benjamin Eden, 2018. "Price Dispersion And Demand Uncertainty: Evidence From U.S. Scanner Data," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 59(3), pages 1035-1075, August.
    18. Luigi Paciello & Andrea Pozzi & Nicholas Trachter, 2019. "Price Dynamics With Customer Markets," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 60(1), pages 413-446, February.
    19. Nicola Lacetera & Claudio A. Piga & Lorenzo Zirulia, 2021. "Sticky Price for Declining Risk? Business Strategies with “Behavioral” Customers in the Hotel Industry," NBER Working Papers 28456, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Rebelo, Sérgio & Anderson, Eric & Wong, Arlene, 2020. "Markups Across Space and Time," CEPR Discussion Papers 15513, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inflation and prices; Inflation: costs and benefits; Market structure and pricing;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E30 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • L81 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Retail and Wholesale Trade; e-Commerce

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:bca:bocawp:24-31. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bocgvca.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.