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The Cyclicality of Sales, Regular and Effective Prices: Comment

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  • López-Salido, J David
  • Gagnon, Etienne
  • Sockin, Jason

Abstract

Coibion, Gorodnichenko, and Hong (2015) argue that the CPI underestimates the deceleration in consumer prices during economic downturns because the index fails to account for the reallocation of consumer spending from high- to low-price stores. We show that these authors' measures of inflation with and without store switching suffer from several methodological deficiencies, including an excessive truncation of price adjustments and the lack of a treatment for missing observations. When we address these deficiencies, the authors' key regression results no longer suggest that greater store switching during downturns is a statistically or economically significant phenomenon.

Suggested Citation

  • López-Salido, J David & Gagnon, Etienne & Sockin, Jason, 2015. "The Cyclicality of Sales, Regular and Effective Prices: Comment," CEPR Discussion Papers 10726, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:10726
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    Cited by:

    1. Fernando Borraz & Giacomo Livan & Anahí Rodríguez-Martínez & Pablo Picardo, 2020. "Price, sales, and the business cycle: a time series principal component analysis," Documentos de trabajo 2020002, Banco Central del Uruguay.
    2. Colin Hottman & Surabhi Ghai, 2019. "Exchange Rates, Product Variety, and Substitution in U.S. Scanner Data," 2019 Meeting Papers 1059, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    3. Erwan Gautier & Hervé Le Bihan, 2018. "Shocks vs Menu Costs: Patterns of Price Rigidity in an Estimated Multi-Sector Menu-Cost Model," 2018 Meeting Papers 248, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    4. Borraz, Fernando & Livan, Giacomo & Rodríguez-Martínez, Anahí & Picardo, Pablo, 2022. "Price, sales, and the business cycle: Microeconomic evidence," Latin American Journal of Central Banking (previously Monetaria), Elsevier, vol. 3(1).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Effective prices; Inflation measurement; Outlet substitution bias;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • 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

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