IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nav/ecupna/0702.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Monopolistic Competition, Sticky Prices, and the Minimal Mark-Up in Steady State

Author

Abstract

This note reports the rate of inflation that minimizes the mark-up of prices over marginal costs in the steady-state solution of a monopolistic competition model with either Taylor (1980) or Calvo (1983) pricing. The minimal mark-up is always found at a positive and low rate of inflation for any sensible parameter calibration. Actually, the rate of inflation that minimizes the mark-up is very close to ratio between the real rate of discount and the Dixit-Stiglitz elasticity. This result is robust to altenative sticky-price specifications.

Suggested Citation

  • Miguel Casares, 2007. "Monopolistic Competition, Sticky Prices, and the Minimal Mark-Up in Steady State," Documentos de Trabajo - Lan Gaiak Departamento de Economía - Universidad Pública de Navarra 0702, Departamento de Economía - Universidad Pública de Navarra.
    • Handle: RePEc:nav:ecupna:0702
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www2.unavarra.es/gesadj/depEconomia/repec/DocumentosTrab/DT0702.PDF
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Miguel Casares, 2004. "Price setting and the steady-state effects of inflation," Spanish Economic Review, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 6(4), pages 267-289, December.
    2. V. V. Chari & Patrick J. Kehoe & Ellen R. McGrattan, 2000. "Sticky Price Models of the Business Cycle: Can the Contract Multiplier Solve the Persistence Problem?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(5), pages 1151-1180, September.
    3. Aubhik Khan & Robert G. King & Alexander L. Wolman, 2003. "Optimal Monetary Policy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 70(4), pages 825-860.
    4. Taylor, John B, 1980. "Aggregate Dynamics and Staggered Contracts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 88(1), pages 1-23, February.
    5. Robert King & Alexander L. Wolman, 1999. "What Should the Monetary Authority Do When Prices Are Sticky?," NBER Chapters, in: Monetary Policy Rules, pages 349-404, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Huang, Kevin X. D. & Liu, Zheng, 2002. "Staggered price-setting, staggered wage-setting, and business cycle persistence," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 405-433, March.
    7. Dixit, Avinash K & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1977. "Monopolistic Competition and Optimum Product Diversity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(3), pages 297-308, June.
    8. Kiley, Michael T, 2002. "Partial Adjustment and Staggered Price Setting," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 34(2), pages 283-298, May.
    9. Erceg, Christopher J. & Henderson, Dale W. & Levin, Andrew T., 2000. "Optimal monetary policy with staggered wage and price contracts," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 281-313, October.
    10. Sbordone, Argia M., 2002. "Prices and unit labor costs: a new test of price stickiness," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 265-292, March.
    11. John B. Taylor, 1999. "Monetary Policy Rules," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number tayl99-1.
    12. Yun, Tack, 1996. "Nominal price rigidity, money supply endogeneity, and business cycles," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(2-3), pages 345-370, April.
    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. Aguilera-Bravo, Asier & Casares, Miguel, 2019. "On staggered prices and optimal inflation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    2. Andrew T. Levin & Alexei Onatski & John Williams & Noah M. Williams, 2006. "Monetary Policy under Uncertainty in Micro-Founded Macroeconometric Models," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2005, Volume 20, pages 229-312, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Levin, Andrew T. & López-Salido, José David & Yun, Tack, 2007. "Strategic Complementarities and Optimal Monetary Policy," Kiel Working Papers 1355, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    4. Thorvardur Tjörvi Ólafsson, 2006. "The New Keynesian Phillips Curve: In Search of Improvements and Adaptation to the Open Economy," Economics wp31_tjorvi, Department of Economics, Central bank of Iceland.
    5. Marvin Goodfriend & Robert G. King, 2001. "The case for price stability," Working Paper 01-02, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    6. Erceg, Christopher J. & Levin, Andrew T., 2003. "Imperfect credibility and inflation persistence," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(4), pages 915-944, May.
    7. Takushi Kurozumi & Willem Van Zandweghe, 2016. "Kinked Demand Curves, the Natural Rate Hypothesis, and Macroeconomic Stability," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 20, pages 240-257, April.
    8. Bilbiie, Florin O. & Fujiwara, Ippei & Ghironi, Fabio, 2014. "Optimal monetary policy with endogenous entry and product variety," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 1-20.
    9. Wolman, Alexander L, 2005. "Real Implications of the Zero Bound on Nominal Interest Rates," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(2), pages 273-296, April.
    10. Casares, Miguel & McCallum, Bennett T., 2006. "An optimizing IS-LM framework with endogenous investment," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 621-644, December.
    11. Cheng-qi Hou & Pin Wang, 2014. "An Estimation of Sectoral Price Stickiness using Aggregate Data," Journal for Economic Forecasting, Institute for Economic Forecasting, vol. 0(2), pages 53-70, June.
    12. Merkl, Christian & Snower, Dennis, 2009. "Monetary Persistence, Imperfect Competition, And Staggering Complementarities," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(1), pages 81-106, February.
    13. PLASMANS, Joseph & FORNERO, Jorge & MICHALAK, Tomasz, 2006. "A microfounded sectoral model for open economies," Working Papers 2007013, University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    14. Coenen, Gunter, 2007. "Inflation persistence and robust monetary policy design," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 111-140, January.
    15. Miguel Casares, 2007. "Monetary Policy Rules in a New Keynesian Euro Area Model," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(4), pages 875-900, June.
    16. Michael Paetz, 2007. "Robust Control and Persistence in the New Keynesian Economy," Quantitative Macroeconomics Working Papers 20711, Hamburg University, Department of Economics.
    17. Batini, Nicoletta & Harrison, Richard & Millard, Stephen P., 2003. "Monetary policy rules for an open economy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 27(11-12), pages 2059-2094, September.
    18. Coenen, Gunter & Wieland, Volker, 2005. "A small estimated euro area model with rational expectations and nominal rigidities," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(5), pages 1081-1104, July.
    19. N. Gregory Mankiw & Ricardo Reis, 2002. "Sticky Information versus Sticky Prices: A Proposal to Replace the New Keynesian Phillips Curve," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(4), pages 1295-1328.
    20. Sharon Kozicki & Peter A. Tinsley, 2002. "Alternative sources of the lag dynamics of inflation," Research Working Paper RWP 02-12, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    monopolistic competition; sticky prices; minimal mark-up;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E12 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Keynes; Keynesian; Post-Keynesian; Modern Monetary Theory
    • 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:nav:ecupna:0702. 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: Javier Puértolas (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.unavarra.es/departamento-economia .

    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.