IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_8394.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Demand or Supply? Price Adjustment during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Author

Listed:
  • Almut Balleer
  • Sebastian Link
  • Manuel Menkhoff
  • Peter Zorn

Abstract

We study price-setting behavior in German firm-level survey data to infer the relative importance of supply and demand during the Covid-19 pandemic. Supply and demand forces coexist, but demand shortages dominate in the short run. A reported negative impact of Covid-19 on current business is associated with a rise in the probability to decrease prices up to eleven percentage points. These results imply a role for aggregate demand stabilization policy to buffer the economic consequences of Covid-19 while containing the pandemic.

Suggested Citation

  • Almut Balleer & Sebastian Link & Manuel Menkhoff & Peter Zorn, 2020. "Demand or Supply? Price Adjustment during the Covid-19 Pandemic," CESifo Working Paper Series 8394, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8394
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp8394.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Scott R Baker & Robert A Farrokhnia & Steffen Meyer & Michaela Pagel & Constantine Yannelis & Jeffrey Pontiff, 0. "How Does Household Spending Respond to an Epidemic? Consumption during the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic," The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 10(4), pages 834-862.
    2. Tarek A. Hassan & Stephan Hollander & Laurence van Lent & Ahmed Tahoun, 2020. "Firm-Level Exposure to Epidemic Diseases: Covid-19, SARS, and H1N1," Working Papers Series inetwp119, Institute for New Economic Thinking.
    3. Lein, Sarah M., 2010. "When do firms adjust prices? Evidence from micro panel data," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(6), pages 696-715, September.
    4. Balleer, Almut & Hristov, Nikolay & Menno, Dominik, 2020. "Menu costs, the price gap distribution and monetary non-neutrality: The role of financial constraints," CEPR Discussion Papers 11790, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Bachmann, Rüdiger & Born, Benjamin & Elstner, Steffen & Grimme, Christian, 2019. "Time-varying business volatility and the price setting of firms," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 82-99.
    6. Sauer,Stefan & Klaus Wohlrabe & Stefan Sauer, 2019. "CEO or Intern − Who Actually Answers the Questionnaires in the ifo Business Survey?," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 20(02), pages 29-31, July.
    7. Sebastian Link, 2019. "The Price and Employment Response of Firms to the Introduction of Minimum Wages," CESifo Working Paper Series 7575, CESifo.
    8. Brinca, Pedro & Duarte, Joao B. & Faria-e-Castro, Miguel, 2021. "Measuring labor supply and demand shocks during COVID-19," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    9. Martin S Eichenbaum & Sergio Rebelo & Mathias Trabandt, 2021. "The Macroeconomics of Epidemics [Economic activity and the spread of viral diseases: Evidence from high frequency data]," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(11), pages 5149-5187.
    10. Xavier Jaravel & Martin O'Connell, 2020. "Inflation spike and falling product variety during the Great Lockdown," IFS Working Papers W20/17, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    11. Hansen, Stephen & Carvalho, Vasco & García, Juan Ramón & Ortiz, Alvaro & Rodrigo, Tomasa & Rodríguez Mora, José V & Ruiz, Pep, 2020. "Tracking the COVID-19 Crisis with High-Resolution Transaction Data," CEPR Discussion Papers 14642, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Alberto Cavallo, 2024. "Inflation with Covid Consumption Baskets," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 72(2), pages 902-917, June.
    13. Balleer, Almut & Link, Sebastian & Menkhoff, Manuel & Zorn, Peter, 2020. "Demand or Supply? Price Adjustment during the COVID-19 Pandemic," IZA Discussion Papers 13568, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Veronica Guerrieri & Guido Lorenzoni & Ludwig Straub & Iván Werning, 2022. "Macroeconomic Implications of COVID-19: Can Negative Supply Shocks Cause Demand Shortages?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(5), pages 1437-1474, May.
    15. Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson, 2018. "Identification in Macroeconomics," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 32(3), pages 59-86, Summer.
    16. Buchheim Lukas & Krolage Carla & Link Sebastian, 2022. "Sudden stop: When did firms anticipate the potential consequences of COVID-19?," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 23(1), pages 79-119, February.
    17. Balleer, Almut & Zorn, Peter, 2019. "Monetary Policy, Price Setting, and Credit Constraints," CEPR Discussion Papers 14163, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Almut Balleer & Nikolay Hristov & Dominik Menno, 2017. "Financial Constraints and Nominal Price Rigidities," CESifo Working Paper Series 6309, CESifo.
    19. Alexander W. Bartik & Marianne Bertrand & Zoë B. Cullen & Edward L. Glaeser & Michael Luca & Christopher T. Stanton, 2020. "How Are Small Businesses Adjusting to COVID-19? Early Evidence from a Survey," NBER Working Papers 26989, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Christian Bayer & Ralph Luetticke & Lien Pham‐Dao & Volker Tjaden, 2019. "Precautionary Savings, Illiquid Assets, and the Aggregate Consequences of Shocks to Household Income Risk," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 87(1), pages 255-290, January.
    21. Lukas Buchheim & Jonas Dovern & Carla Krolage & Sebastian Link, 2020. "Firm-Level Expectations and Behavior in Response to the Covid-19 Crisis," CESifo Working Paper Series 8304, CESifo.
    22. David Baqaee & Emmanuel Farhi, 2022. "Supply and Demand in Disaggregated Keynesian Economies with an Application to the COVID-19 Crisis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(5), pages 1397-1436, May.
    23. Danny Yagan, 2015. "Capital Tax Reform and the Real Economy: The Effects of the 2003 Dividend Tax Cut," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(12), pages 3531-3563, December.
    24. Jean-Noël Barrot & Basile Grassi & Julien Sauvagnat, 2021. "Sectoral Effects of Social Distancing," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 111, pages 277-281, May.
    25. 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).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Santiago E. Alvarez & Sarah M. Lein, 2020. "Tracking inflation on a daily basis," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 156(1), pages 1-13, December.
    2. Pierluigi Balduzzi & Emanuele Brancati & Marco Brianti & Fabio Schiantarelli, 2020. "Credit Constraints anf Firms' Decisions: Evidence from the COVID-19 Outbreak Italian Firms’ Expectations and Plans," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 1013, Boston College Department of Economics, revised 07 Oct 2022.
    3. Balduzzi, Pierluigi & Brancati, Emanuele & Brianti, Marco & Schiantarelli, Fabio, 2020. "The Economic Effects of COVID-19 and Credit Constraints: Evidence from Italian Firms' Expectations and Plans," IZA Discussion Papers 13629, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. 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).
    5. David Bounie & Youssouf Camara & John Galbraith, 2020. "Consumers’ Mobility, Expenditure and Online-Offline Substitution Response to COVID-19: Evidence from French Transaction Data," Cahiers de recherche 14-2020, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    6. Abel Brodeur & David Gray & Anik Islam & Suraiya Bhuiyan, 2021. "A literature review of the economics of COVID‐19," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(4), pages 1007-1044, September.
    7. Faria-e-Castro, Miguel, 2021. "Fiscal policy during a pandemic," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    8. Di Bartolomeo, Giovanni & D'Imperio, Paolo & Felici, Francesco, 2022. "The fiscal response to the Italian COVID-19 crisis: A counterfactual analysis," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    9. Link, Sebastian & Peichl, Andreas & Roth, Christopher & Wohlfart, Johannes, 2023. "Information frictions among firms and households," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 99-115.
    10. Hinterlang, Natascha & Moyen, Stephane & Röhe, Oke & Stähler, Nikolai, 2023. "Gauging the effects of the German COVID-19 fiscal stimulus package," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    11. Buchheim Lukas & Krolage Carla & Link Sebastian, 2022. "Sudden stop: When did firms anticipate the potential consequences of COVID-19?," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 23(1), pages 79-119, February.
    12. Almut Balleer & Sebastian Link & Manuel Menkhoff & Peter Zorn, 2020. "Nachfrage oder Angebot? Erkenntnisse aus dem Preissetzungsverhalten deutscher Unternehmen während der Coronakrise," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 73(07), pages 13-16, July.
    13. Dietrich, Alexander M. & Kuester, Keith & Müller, Gernot J. & Schoenle, Raphael, 2022. "News and uncertainty about COVID-19: Survey evidence and short-run economic impact," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(S), pages 35-51.
    14. Kong, Edward & Prinz, Daniel, 2020. "Disentangling policy effects using proxy data: Which shutdown policies affected unemployment during the COVID-19 pandemic?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    15. Brancati, Emanuele & Brancati, Raffaele, 2020. "Heterogeneous Shocks in the Covid-19 Pandemic: Panel Evidence from Italian Firms," GLO Discussion Paper Series 649, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    16. Jaravel, Xavier & O'Connell, Martin, 2020. "Inflation Spike and Falling Product Variety during the Great Lockdown," CEPR Discussion Papers 14880, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. Christopher D. Carroll & Edmund Crawley & Jiri Slacalek & Matthew N. White, 2021. "Modeling the Consumption Response to the CARES Act," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 17(1), pages 107-141, March.
    18. Thiemo Fetzer, 2022. "Subsidising the spread of COVID-19: Evidence from the UK’S Eat-Out-to-Help-Out Scheme," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(643), pages 1200-1217.
    19. Tomaz Cajner & Leland D. Crane & Ryan A. Decker & John Grigsby & Adrian Hamins-Puertolas & Erik Hurst & Christopher Kurz & Ahu Yildirmaz, 2020. "The US Labor Market during the Beginning of the Pandemic Recession," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 51(2 (Summer), pages 3-33.
    20. David E. Bloom & Michael Kuhn & Klaus Prettner, 2022. "Modern Infectious Diseases: Macroeconomic Impacts and Policy Responses," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 60(1), pages 85-131, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    producer price setting; supply; demand; Covid-19; fiscal policy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • H50 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - General
    • E60 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - General
    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis

    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:ces:ceswps:_8394. 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: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.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.