IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed015/1429.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Price Setting Under Uncertainty About Inflation

Author

Listed:
  • Diego Perez

    (Stanford)

  • Andres Drenik

    (Stanford)

Abstract

When setting prices firms use idiosyncratic information about the demand for their products as well as public information about the aggregate macroeconomic state. This paper provides an empirical assessment of the effects of the availability of public information about inflation on price setting. We exploit an event in which economic agents lost access to information about the inflation rate: starting in 2007 the Argentinean government began to misreport the national inflation rate. Our difference-in-difference analysis reveals that this policy led to an increase in the coefficient of variation of prices of 18% with respect to its mean. This effect is analyzed in the context of a general equilibrium model in which agents make use of publicly available information about the inflation rate to set prices. We quantify the model and use it to further explore the effects of higher uncertainty about inflation on the effectiveness of monetary policy and aggregate welfare. We find that monetary policy becomes more effective in a context of higher uncertainty about inflation and that not reporting accurate measures of the CPI entails significant welfare losses.

Suggested Citation

  • Diego Perez & Andres Drenik, 2015. "Price Setting Under Uncertainty About Inflation," 2015 Meeting Papers 1429, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed015:1429
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2015/paper_1429.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. George-Marios Angeletos & Alessandro Pavan, 2004. "Transparency of Information and Coordination in Economies with Investment Complementarities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 91-98, May.
    2. Angeletos, George-Marios & La’O, Jennifer, 2009. "Incomplete information, higher-order beliefs and price inertia," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(S), pages 19-37.
    3. Card, David & Krueger, Alan B, 1994. "Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 772-793, September.
    4. Manuel Amador & Pierre-Olivier Weill, 2010. "Learning from Prices: Public Communication and Welfare," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(5), pages 866-907.
    5. Olivier Coibion & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2012. "What Can Survey Forecasts Tell Us about Information Rigidities?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(1), pages 116-159.
    6. 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.
    7. Ariel Burstein & Christian Hellwig, 2008. "Welfare Costs of Inflation in a Menu Cost Model," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(2), pages 438-443, May.
    8. Klenow, Peter J. & Willis, Jonathan L., 2007. "Sticky information and sticky prices," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(Supplemen), pages 79-99, September.
    9. Hayek, F. A., 2012. "Hayek on Hayek," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226321202 edited by Kresge, Stephen & Wenar, Leif, December.
    10. Hellwig, Christian & Venkateswaran, Venky, 2009. "Setting the right prices for the wrong reasons," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(S), pages 57-77.
    11. Mikhail Golosov & Robert E. Lucas Jr., 2007. "Menu Costs and Phillips Curves," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(2), pages 171-199.
    12. Joseph Vavra, 2014. "Inflation Dynamics and Time-Varying Volatility: New Evidence and an Ss Interpretation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(1), pages 215-258.
    13. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "How Much Should We Trust Differences-In-Differences Estimates?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 249-275.
    14. Cavallo, Alberto, 2013. "Online and official price indexes: Measuring Argentina's inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 152-165.
    15. Reinsdorf, Marshall, 1994. "New Evidence on the Relation between Inflation and Price Dispersion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(3), pages 720-731, June.
    16. Van Hoomissen, Theresa, 1988. "Price Dispersion and Inflation: Evidence from Israel," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(6), pages 1303-1314, December.
    17. Lucas, Robert Jr., 1972. "Expectations and the neutrality of money," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 103-124, April.
    18. Julio Blanco & Isaac Baley, 2013. "Learning to Price," 2013 Meeting Papers 663, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    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. Paulie, Charlotte, 2019. "Does Inflation Targeting Reduce the Dispersion of Price Setters’ Inflation Expectations?," Working Paper Series 2018:16, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    2. Paulie, Charlotte, 2019. "Does Inflation Targeting Reduce the Dispersion of Price Setters’ Inflation Expectations?," Working Paper Series 370, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden).

    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. Drenik, Andrés & Perez, Diego J., 2020. "Price setting under uncertainty about inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 23-38.
    2. George-Marios Angeletos & Chen Lian, 2016. "Incomplete Information in Macroeconomics: Accommodating Frictions in Coordination," NBER Working Papers 22297, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Angeletos, G.-M. & Lian, C., 2016. "Incomplete Information in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1065-1240, Elsevier.
    4. Rondina, Giacomo & Walker, Todd B., 2021. "Confounding dynamics," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    5. CHEN Cheng & SENGA Tatsuro & SUN Chang & ZHANG Hongyong, 2020. "Information Acquisition and Price Setting under Uncertainty: New Survey Evidence," Discussion papers 20078, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    6. George-Marios Angeletos & Chen Lian, 2018. "Forward Guidance without Common Knowledge," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(9), pages 2477-2512, September.
    7. 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.
    8. 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.
    9. Benhima, Kenza, 2019. "Booms and busts with dispersed information," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 32-47.
    10. George-Marios Angeletos, 2018. "Frictional Coordination," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 16(3), pages 563-603.
    11. Kenza Benhima & Isabella Blengini, 2020. "Optimal Monetary Policy when Information is Market-Generated," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 130(628), pages 956-975.
    12. Sheremirov, Viacheslav, 2020. "Price dispersion and inflation: New facts and theoretical implications," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 59-70.
    13. Mäkinen, Taneli & Ohl, Björn, 2015. "Information acquisition and learning from prices over the business cycle," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 158(PB), pages 585-633.
    14. Ou, Shengliang & Zhang, Donghai & Zhang, Renbin, 2021. "Information frictions, monetary policy, and the paradox of price flexibility," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 70-82.
    15. Leonardo Melosi, 2017. "Signalling Effects of Monetary Policy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 84(2), pages 853-884.
    16. Mankiw, N. Gregory & Reis, Ricardo, 2010. "Imperfect Information and Aggregate Supply," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: Benjamin M. Friedman & Michael Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 5, pages 183-229, Elsevier.
    17. Hassan Afrouzi & Joel P. Flynn & Choongryul Yang, 2024. "What Can Measured Beliefs Tell Us About Monetary Non-Neutrality?," NBER Working Papers 32541, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Isaac Baley & J. Andrés Blanco, 2016. "Menu costs, uncertainty cycles, and the propagation of nominal shocks," Economics Working Papers 1532, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    19. Zhao Han & Xiaohan Ma & Ruoyun Mao, 2023. "The Role of Dispersed Information in Inflation and Inflation Expectations," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 48, pages 72-106, April.
    20. Oleksiy Kryvtsov, 2005. "Information Flows and Aggregate Persistence," Computing in Economics and Finance 2005 416, Society for Computational Economics.

    More about this item

    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:red:sed015:1429. 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: Christian Zimmermann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sedddea.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.