Microeconomic price adjustments: A Survey of Theoretical Models and Empirical Results

作者：Gautier Erwan^*

来源：Revue d Economie Politique, 2009, 119(3): 323-372.

• price rigidity
• inflation
• monetary policy

Microeconomic price rigidity is one of the main assumptions of the neo-keynesian macroeconomic models. Firms are not able to adjust continuously their prices. In this paper, we make a synthesis of the main microeconomic price setting theoretical models and of their empirical counterparts. Price rigidity is often justified by two models: a first one assumes that prices are time-dependent. At each period, a constant proportion of firms can change their prices. A lot of recent empirical works provide estimates of this proportion and evaluate its stability over time. A second model assumes that prices are state-dependent. Firms have to pay an adjustment cost each time they change their price and it can be optimal to differ a price change. These adjustments costs are empirically measured and recent studies focus on the impact of these menu costs on the inflation process. Besides, in this paper, we show to which extent macroeconomic models are able to match microeconomic stylised facts and persistent macroeconomic dynamics.

• 出版日期2009-6