Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/144329 
Year of Publication: 
2007
Series/Report no.: 
NBB Working Paper No. 116
Publisher: 
National Bank of Belgium, Brussels
Abstract: 
Temporal distribution of individual price changes is of crucial importance for business cycle theory and for the micro-foundations of price adjustment. While it is routinely assumed that price changes are staggered over time, both theory and evidence are ambiguous. We use a large Belgian data set to analyze whether price changes are staggered or synchronized. We find that the more aggregate the data, the closer the distribution to perfect staggering. This result holds for both aggregation across goods and across locations. Our results provide support for Bhaskar’s (2002) model of synchronized adjustment within, and staggered adjustment across, industries.
Subjects: 
staggering
synchronization
aggregation
price setting
JEL: 
E31
L16
D21
L11
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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