IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cep/cepcvd/cepcovid-19-017.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Prices and inflation in a pandemic - a micro data approach

Author

Listed:
  • Richard Davies

Abstract

The Covid-19 lockdowns and recession are the most exceptional economic events in living memory and will impact the economy for years to come. One vital channel is via price changes. Price rises and cuts alter real wages, influencing consumer spending power. They have knock-on effects, via the official consumer price index (CPI) on regulated payments and costs including pensions, inflation-protected bonds and utilities. The degree of price flexibility in an economy also influences the impact of monetary policy. The way prices are evolving is thus a vital question in understanding the economic impact of pandemic. While some Covid-19 related questions will take years to answer, the availability of 'micro' data for the UK means that the impact on prices is something we can track in close to real time. The price data used in this briefing come from monthly records collected and published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The monthly 'price quote' files track the item sold, the shop selling it, and the UK region in which it is located. Data are available between February 1988 and December 2020. The final clean dataset contains 36m observations.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard Davies, 2021. "Prices and inflation in a pandemic - a micro data approach," CEP Covid-19 Analyses cepcovid-19-017, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    • Handle: RePEc:cep:cepcvd:cepcovid-19-017
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/cepcovid-19-017.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Emmanuel Dhyne & Luis J. Alvarez & Herve Le Bihan & Giovanni Veronese & Daniel Dias & Johannes Hoffmann & Nicole Jonker & Patrick Lunnemann & Fabio Rumler & Jouko Vilmunen, 2006. "Price Changes in the Euro Area and the United States: Some Facts from Individual Consumer Price Data," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(2), pages 171-192, Spring.
    2. Jaravel, Xavier & O'Connell, Martin, 2020. "Real-time price indices: Inflation spike and falling product variety during the Great Lockdown," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    3. Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson, 2008. "Five Facts about Prices: A Reevaluation of Menu Cost Models," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(4), pages 1415-1464.
    4. Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson & Patrick Sun & Daniel Villar, 2018. "The Elusive Costs of Inflation: Price Dispersion during the U.S. Great Inflation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(4), pages 1933-1980.
    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. Josh De Lyon & Swati Dhingra, 2021. "The impacts of Covid-19 and Brexit on the UK economy: early evidence in 2021," CEP Covid-19 Analyses cepcovid-19-021, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    2. Costin Radu Boldea & Bogdan Ion Boldea & Tiberiu Iancu, 2023. "The Pandemic Waves’ Impact on the Crude Oil Price and the Rise of Consumer Price Index: Case Study for Six European Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(8), pages 1-15, April.

    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. Cristina Conflitti & Riemer P. Faber & Brian Fabo & Ludmila Fadejeva & Erwan Gautier & Valentin Jouvanceau & Jan-Oliver Menz & Teresa Messner & Pavlos Petroulas & Pau Roldan-Blanco & Fabio Rumler & Se, 2022. "New Facts on Consumer Price Rigidity in the Euro Area (Erwan Gautier, Cristina Conflitti, Riemer P. Faber, Brian Fabo, Ludmila Fadejeva, Valentin Jouvanceau, Jan-Oliver Menz, Teresa Messner, Pavlos Pe," Working Papers 240, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank).
    2. Richard Davies, 2021. "Prices and inflation in the UK - A new dataset," CEP Occasional Papers 55, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    3. 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.
    4. Cavallo, Alberto & Kryvtsov, Oleksiy, 2024. "Price discounts and cheapflation during the post-pandemic inflation surge," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 148(S).
    5. Hobijn, Bart & Nechio, Fernanda & Shapiro, Adam Hale, 2021. "Using Brexit to identify the nature of price rigidities," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    6. Barbara Rudolf & Pascal Seiler, 2022. "Price setting before and during the pandemic: evidence from Swiss consumer prices," Working Papers 2022-12, Swiss National Bank.
    7. Hahn, Volker & Marenčák, Michal, 2020. "Price points and price dynamics," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 127-144.
    8. Kozo Ueda, 2023. "Evidence on Price Stickiness in Japan," CARF F-Series CARF-F-570, Center for Advanced Research in Finance, Faculty of Economics, The University of Tokyo.
    9. Amlendu Dubey & Juhi Lohani, 2022. "Inflation targeting and price behaviour: evidence from India," Indian Economic Review, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 265-284, December.
    10. 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.
    11. Maarten Dossche, 2009. "Understanding Inflation Dynamics.Where Do We Stand?," Review of Business and Economic Literature, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Review of Business and Economic Literature, vol. 0(2), pages 209-227.
    12. Young, Andrew T. & Levy, Daniel, 2014. "Explicit Evidence of an Implicit Contract," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 30(4), pages 804-832.
    13. 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.
    14. Jennifer Peña & Elvira Prades, 2021. "Price setting in Chile: Micro evidence from consumer on-line prices during the social outbreak and Covid-19," Working Papers 2112, Banco de España.
    15. Chi-Young Choi, 2010. "Reconsidering the Relationship between Inflation and Relative Price Variability," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(5), pages 769-798, August.
    16. Lloyd, Tim A. & Morgan, C. Wyn & McCorriston, Steve & Zgovu, Evious, 2011. "Do Sales Matter? Evidence from UK Food Retailing," 85th Annual Conference, April 18-20, 2011, Warwick University, Coventry, UK 108774, Agricultural Economics Society.
    17. Barbara Annicchiarico & Alessandra Pelloni, 2014. "Productivity growth and volatility: how important are wage and price rigidities?," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 66(1), pages 306-324, January.
    18. Raphael Auer & Ariel Burstein & Sarah M. Lein, 2021. "Exchange Rates and Prices: Evidence from the 2015 Swiss Franc Appreciation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(2), pages 652-686, February.
    19. Özmen, M. Utku & Tuğan, Mustafa, 2022. "Heterogeneity in sectoral price and quantity responses to shocks to monetary policy," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    20. Philip Vermeulen & Daniel A. Dias & Maarten Dossche & Erwan Gautier & Ignacio Hernando & Roberto Sabbatini & Harald Stahl, 2012. "Price Setting in the Euro Area: Some Stylized Facts from Individual Producer Price Data," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 44(8), pages 1631-1650, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Covid-19; inflation; firm size; price changes;
    All these keywords.

    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:cep:cepcvd:cepcovid-19-017. 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://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publications/covid-19-analyses/ .

    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.