Price gouging versus price reduction in retail gasoline markets during Hurricane Rita

Using extensive hand-collected retail gas prices, I show that there was no price gouging in Bryan/College Station during Hurricane Rita. Instead, the retail price markup dropped by twelve cents during the hurricane, despite most stations running out of gas.     

The behaviour of producer prices: evidence from French PPI micro data

This paper provides some new empirical findings for how French producers set prices. We used the micro data that composes the producer and business-service price indices from 1994 to 2005. First we address how producer prices are collected. Then we present the main characteristics of how producers change their prices: they are modified infrequently and in small amounts. Also, a behavioural heterogeneity across sectors is observed. Business-service prices change less often than industrial producer prices. The data corroborates both time and state-dependent model predictions. Taylor contracts are not unusual, but a firm’s prices will also react to its economic situation. Nevertheless, the most relevant models, to explain producer price rigidity, are time-dependent.

“The fact that some prices are rigid or sticky, while others are variable, has attracted a good deal of comments from economists in recent years” Tucker (1938)

This study was conducted in the context of the Eurosystem Inflation Persistence Network. Data were processed under the responsibility of INSEE in the context of an agreement between INSEE and the Banque de France (20B-21B-E301/R05019/2005).     

企业降价与总收益关系的新认识

随着环境的变化,企业有时候要调低产品价格。本文针对一些企业错误地应用关于降价与总收益关系的传统结论的现象,结合数学和经济学,提出了很多命题,对降价与总收益之间的关系揭示得很清楚,对于传统的需求价格弹性理论关于降价与总收益之间关系的不完全准确认识的一种修正,也是对需求价格弹性理论应用的拓展;且本文分别用图形形象地表示出降价与总收益之间的关系,结合企业在调低价格后给予一定的指导——企业降价后还要进行跟踪调查、还要根据效果采取相应措施、要关注客户需求量的变化、降价不是拍脑袋的事情,这具有一定的现实意义。     

Price discrimination and price dispersion in a duopoly

This paper analyses the problem of price discrimination in a market where consumers have heterogeneous preferences both over a horizontal parameter (brand) and a vertical one (quality). Discriminatory contracts are characterized for different market structures. It is shown that price dispersion, i.e. the observed range of prices for each class of customers, increases almost everywhere as competition is introduced in the market.     

中国食用油涨价对经济影响的投入产出分析

食用油作为居民日常生活必须品,已渗透到了经济体的各个方面,其价格上涨必将引起相关产业部门价格的波动,进而影响到整个经济体的运行和居民生产生活。文章运用投入产出价格影响局部闭模型,并结合2007年投入产出表,量化了2009年四季度末食用油价格上涨对我国居民消费和国民经济各部门的影响。结果表明,农村居民生活消费受食用油价格上涨的影响大于城镇居民,消费者价格指数受到的影响大于生产者价格指数;在各产业中,受影响最大的是方便食品制造业、饲料加工业等食品工业和餐饮业。居民和大多数行业,对于食用油价格上涨有一定承受能力,此次食用油价格上涨在10～15％区间并不会导致物价水平大幅上升。价格作为市场经济中反映供求关系、资源稀缺程度的核心指标,其波动有合理性的一面,不必过分宣传或夸大食用油价格上涨对国民经济和居民生产生活的影响。     

物价稳定与房价：货币政策视角

住房价格变化是货币政策需要关注的重要指标。本文在梳理现有文献的基础上,研究了物价稳定与房价变动的关系,发现房价是物价变动的重要原因,而M1和贷款利率是房价变动的格兰杰原因。通过进一步建立结构性VAR模型,我们发现房价受到贷款利率影响最大,而物价受到货币供应量的影响最大。针对房价与物价变动的三个场景可以采取不同的货币政策操作：1、房价过快增长,物价保持稳定。此时为了避免房价对未来物价的冲击,又不影响到当前物价的稳定,可以提高贷款利率,并保持相对宽松的货币供给以对冲房价下跌对物价的不利影响,达到抑制房价而不影响物价的效果。2、房价和物价双双过快增长。此时,应调整贷款利率、准备金率和货币供应量,三管齐下加以治理。3、物价过快增长,而房价较为稳定。为了避免打压房价,可以不调整贷款利率、准备金率,仅控制货币供应量。     

Stylised features of consumer price setting behaviour in Portugal: 1992–2001

This paper identifies the empirical stylized features of consumer price setting behavior in Portugal using two micro-datasets underlying the consumer price index. The main conclusions are: one in every four prices change each month; there is a considerable degree of heterogeneity in price setting practices; prices of goods change more often than prices of services; price reductions are common, as they account to around 40% of total price changes; price changes are, in general, sizeable; finally, the price setting patterns seem to depend on the level of inflation as well as on the type of outlet.

The multiple unit auction with variable supply

Summary. The theory of multiple unit auctions traditionally assumes that the offered quantity is fixed. I argue that this assumption is not appropriate for many applications because the seller may be able and willing to adjust the supply as a function of the bidding. In this paper I address this shortcoming by analyzing a multi-unit auction game between a monopolistic seller who can produce arbitrary quantities at constant unit cost, and oligopolistic bidders. I establish the existence of a subgame-perfect equilibrium for price discriminating and for uniform price auctions. I also show that bidders have an incentive to misreport their true demand in both auction formats, but they do that in different ways and for different reasons. Furthermore, both auction formats are inefficient, but there is no unambiguous ordering among them. Finally, the more competitive the bidders are, the more likely the seller is to prefer uniform pricing over price discrimination, yet increased competition among bidders may or may not enhance efficiency. Received: June 18, 1998; revised version: January 13, 1999     

城市住宅结构特征的居民偏好分析

选取2011年6月—12月广州市10个新建商品住宅项目的销售数据作为研究样本,结合Hedonic模型理论对城市住宅结构特征的居民偏好程度进行实证分析。研究结论:1城市购房主体人群首先倾向于选择中大户型住宅,进而考虑中高层和南向等结构位置的住宅,最后才会关注卫生间数量、阳台数量和实用率等结构特征;2中心区位与郊区区位的住宅购买者偏好差异不大,而城市近郊住宅购买者偏好集中在建筑面积和房间数量两个方面,证明其投资倾向略重。     

财政约束与价格水平决定:FTPL的一个批判

本文在一个内生增长一般均衡货币模型中, 通过引入名义债券、实际债券、货币和物质资本, 讨论了政府财政约束与价格水平决定的关系。我们发现, 在平衡增长路径上均衡通货膨胀率完全由货币增长率决定, 政府跨时预算约束方程只是个恒等式。如果价格水平财政理论(FiscalTheoryofPriceLevel, FTPL) 成立, 则小得可以忽略的财政扰动可以导致物价水平的巨大波动, 这是无法让人接受的; 进一步的研究发现, 问题出现的原因是FTPL将名义债券市场和其他资产市场割裂开来, 孤立地讨论了名义债券市场出清的条件, 由此认为跨时预算约束方程是一个均衡定价方程; 当将诸市场统一起来考虑时, 公众可以在货币、债券和物质资本之间进行选择, 财政当局不再是一个价格决定者, 其债券发行量成为一个内生变量, 必须服从跨时预算约束方程, 后者成为一个恒等式, 从而价格水平主要由货币当局的货币发行决定。     

Strong equilibrium in cost sharing connection games

We study network games in which each player wishes to connect his source and sink, and the cost of each edge is shared among its users either equally (in Fair Connection Games—FCG's) or arbitrarily (in General Connection Games—GCG's). We study the existence and quality of strong equilibria (SE)—strategy profiles from which no coalition can improve the cost of each of its members—in these settings. We show that SE always exist in the following games: (1) Single source and sink FCG's and GCG's. (2) Single source multiple sinks FCG's and GCG's on series parallel graphs. (3) Multi source and sink FCG's on extension parallel graphs. As for the quality of the SE, in any FCG with n players, the cost of any SE is bounded by H(n) (i.e., the harmonic sum), contrasted with the Θ(n) price of anarchy. For any GCG, any SE is optimal.     

On Sraffa's Standard commodity

The necessity of expressing the relative price of a commodityin terms of another commodity makes it impossible to distinguishthat part of any change that can be ascribed to the characteristicsof the commodity itself from the part of that change that isto be ascribed to the characteristics of the commodity of reference,i.e., the numéraire. Ricardo (1817) was the first topoint out this problem and the need to find an ‘invariablemeasure of value’, but he was not able to solve the problem.In 1960, Sraffa suggested using a bundle of commodities, thathe called ‘Standard commodity’, to accomplish thisfunction, claiming that it was a standard of value invariantwith respect to changes in the distribution of income. But inSraffa's book there is no explicit proof of this claim. Thisgave rise to many misunderstandings about the Standard commodityand its role as invariable measure of value. This paper proposesa proper definition of an ‘invariable measure of value’,and then proves that the Sraffa ‘Standard commodity’does fulfil the requirements of this definition.     

Modelling internal devaluation experiences in Europe: Rational or learning agents?

In this paper we study the experiences of wage and price mark-up adjustments (internal devaluation) in Germany (in the decade up to 2009) and Spain (in the 5-year after 2009) within the framework of the ECB’s New Multi-Country Model (NMCM). The NMCM works both in a rational expectation environment and in a learning environment. We show that a learning environment (where agents take time to adapt to the new situation) appears well suited to capture the gradual wage and price adjustment of Germany and Spain. By contrast a rational expectation model appears more appropriate to describe the abrupt wage adjustment which took place in the Baltic States in 2008–09. The two environments appear to reflect the institutional differences between Germany and Spain on the one-hand and the Baltic States on the other hand. Moreover, in the learning environment, GDP and employment gains are delayed with respect to a rational expectation setting, but they are more long-lasting.