IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/4267.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Inflation and the Informativeness of Prices

Author

Listed:
  • Laurence Ball
  • David Romer

Abstract

This paper studies the welfare effects of the relative price variability arising from inflation. When agents interact in anonymous markets, with customers buying from new suppliers each period, relative price variability benefits customers and cannot harm suppliers substantially. But if customers and suppliers form long-term relationships, prices have an informational role: a potential customer uses current prices as signals of future prices. Inflation reduces the informativeness of current prices, causing customers to make costly mistakes about which relationships to enter. In addition, the reduced informativeness of prices makes demand less price-elastic, thereby increasing markups. Both effects can be quantitatively significant at moderate inflation rates.

Suggested Citation

  • Laurence Ball & David Romer, 1993. "Inflation and the Informativeness of Prices," NBER Working Papers 4267, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:4267
    Note: ME EFG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w4267.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Blinder, Alan S, 1991. "Why Are Prices Sticky? Preliminary Results from an Interview Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(2), pages 89-96, May.
    2. Michael L. Wachter & Oliver E. Williamson, 1978. "Obligational Markets and the Mechanics of Inflation," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 9(2), pages 549-571, Autumn.
    3. Peter A. Diamond, 1993. "Search, Sticky Prices, and Inflation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(1), pages 53-68.
    4. Anil K Kashyap, 1995. "Sticky Prices: New Evidence from Retail Catalogs," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(1), pages 245-274.
    5. Benabou, Roland & Konieczny, Jerzy D, 1994. "On Inflation and Output with Costly Price Changes: A Simple Unifying Result," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(1), pages 290-297, March.
    6. Roland Benabou & Robert Gertner, 1991. "The Informativeness of Prices: Search With Learning and Cost Uncertainty," NBER Working Papers 3833, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Dennis W. Carlton, 1982. "The Disruptive Effect of Inflation on the Organization of Markets," NBER Chapters, in: Inflation: Causes and Effects, pages 139-152, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. repec:bla:econom:v:53:y:1986:i:210:p:219-30 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Lucas, Robert E, Jr, 1973. "Some International Evidence on Output-Inflation Tradeoffs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 63(3), pages 326-334, June.
    10. Arthur M. Okun, 1975. "Inflation: Its Mechanics and Welfare Costs," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 6(2), pages 351-402.
    11. Frederick V. Waugh, 1944. "Does the Consumer Benefit from Price Instability?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 58(4), pages 602-614.
    12. Cecchetti, Stephen G., 1986. "The frequency of price adjustment : A study of the newsstand prices of magazines," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 255-274, April.
    13. Stanley Fischer, 1981. "Relative Shocks, Relative Price Variability, and Inflation," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 12(2), pages 381-442.
    14. Mariano Tommasi, 1992. "The Welfare Effects of Inflation, The Consequences of Price Instability on Search Markets," UCLA Economics Working Papers 655, UCLA Department of Economics.
    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. J. Konieczny, A. Skrzpacz, 2006. "Search, Costly Price Adjustment and the Frequency of Price Changes - Theory and Evidence," Working Papers eg0054, Wilfrid Laurier University, Department of Economics, revised 2006.
    2. Mariano Tommasi, 1992. "The Welfare Effects of Inflation, The Consequences of Price Instability on Search Markets," UCLA Economics Working Papers 655, UCLA Department of Economics.
    3. Banerjee, Anindya & Mizen, Paul & Russell, Bill, 2007. "Inflation, relative price variability and the markup: Evidence from the United States and the United Kingdom," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 82-100, January.
    4. Watanabe, Makoto, 2008. "Inflation, price competition, and consumer search technology," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(12), pages 3780-3806, December.
    5. Dutta, Shantanu & Bergen, Mark & Levy, Daniel, 2002. "Price flexibility in channels of distribution: Evidence from scanner data," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 26(11), pages 1845-1900, September.
    6. Bill Russell, 2002. "The Long Run Relationships among Price Variability, Inflation and the Markup," Dundee Discussion Papers in Economics 127, Economic Studies, University of Dundee.
    7. Levy, Daniel & Bergen, Mark & Dutta, Shantanu & Venable, Robert, 1997. "The Magnitude of Menu Costs: Direct Evidence from Large U.S. Supermarket Chains," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 112(3), pages 791-824.
    8. Grier, Kevin B. & Perry, Mark J., 1996. "Inflation, inflation uncertainty, and relative price dispersion: Evidence from bivariate GARCH-M models," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 391-405, October.
    9. Emmanuel Dhyne & Jerzy Konieczny & Fabio Rumler & Patrick Sevestre, 2009. "Price rigidity in the euro area - An assessment," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 380, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    10. 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.
    11. Jens-Peter Loy & Christoph Weiss, 2002. "Staggering and synchronisation of prices in a low-inflation environment: Evidence from German food stores," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(4), pages 437-457.
    12. 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.
    13. Misas A., Martha & López-Enciso, Enrique Antonio & Parra Álvarez, Juan Carlos, 2011. "La formación de precios en las empresas colombianas : evidencia a partir de una encuesta directa," Chapters, in: López Enciso, Enrique & Ramírez Giraldo, María Teresa (ed.), Formación de precios y salarios en Colombia T.1, volume 1, chapter 9, pages 297-375, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    14. Abdul Karim, Zulkefly & Zaidi, Mohd Azlan Shah & Jusoh, Mansor, 2008. "Variabiliti harga relatif dan inflasi : bukti empirikal di Semenanjung Malaysia, Sabah dan Sarawak [Relative price variability and inflation: empirical evidence in Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sa," MPRA Paper 26970, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Jun 2008.
    15. Snir, Avichai & (Allan) Chen, Haipeng & Levy, Daniel, 2022. "Zero-ending prices, cognitive convenience, and price rigidity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 203(C), pages 519-542.
    16. Lee E. Ohanian & Alan C. Stockman, 1994. "Short-run effects on money when some prices are sticky," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue Sum, pages 1-24.
    17. Russell Cooper & Andrew John, 2000. "Imperfect competition and macroeconomics : Theory and quantitative implications," Cahiers d'Économie Politique, Programme National Persée, vol. 37(1), pages 289-328.
    18. Debelle, Guy & Lamont, Owen, 1997. "Relative Price Variability and Inflation: Evidence from U.S. Cities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(1), pages 132-152, February.
    19. Fishman, Arthur, 1992. "Search Technology, Staggered Price-Setting, and Price Dispersion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(1), pages 287-298, March.
    20. Choudhary, M. Ali & Faheem, Abdul & Hanif, M. Nadim & Naeem, Saima & Pasha, Farooq, 2016. "Price setting & price stickiness: A developing economy perspective," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 44-61.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • 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:nbr:nberwo:4267. 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/nberrus.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.