Understanding Long-run Price Dispersion

A unique panel of retail prices spanning 123 cities in 79 countries from 1990 to 2005 is used to uncover the novel properties of long-run international price dispersion. At the PPP level, almost all of price dispersion is attributed to unskilled wage dispersion. At the level of individual goods and services, the average contribution of these wages is signi?cantly reduced, ref?ecting that good-speci?c sources of price dispersion, such as trade costs and good-specifi?c markups, tend to average out across goods. At the LOP level, borders and distance contribute about equally to price dispersion that is rising in the distribution share.