Analyses of a large retail scanner price data set reveal a new and surprising regularity - small price increases occur more frequently than small price decreases for price changes of up to 10¢. That is, we find asymmetric price adjustment "in the small." Furthermore, it turns out that...

There has been increasing interest in understanding how firms undertake non-price adjustment activities, especially in situations where prices may be rigid despite changes in market conditions. Using scanner price data for over 4500 different food products from a large US supermarket chain, we...

We empirically study the price adjustment process at multiproduct retail stores. We use a unique store level data set for five large supermarket and one drugstore chains in the USA, to document the exact process required to change prices. Our data set allows us to study this process in great...

Managerial myopia in identifying competitive threats is a well-recognized phenomenon (Levitt, 1960; Zajac and Bazerman, 1991). Identifying such threats is particularly problematic, since they may arise from substitutability on the supply side as well as on the demand side. Managers who focus only on...

Exclusive territory distribution arrangements are commonly observed in many markets. Once deployed, such arrangements are often subject to gray market activity, in the form of unauthorized sales which violate assigned restrictions. Interestingly, however, firms frequently choose to tolerate...

Internet technologies should lessen information asymmetry, prompting competitive price reactions, but this does not seem to be happening in Internet-based selling. We study empirical regularities of price change timing for music CD vendors and booksellers to assess several theoretical...

This introductory essay briefly summarizes the 11 empirical studies of price setting and price adjustment that are included in this special issue. The studies, which use data from several European countries, were conducted as part of the European Central Bank's Inflation Persistence Network....

The price system, the adjustment of prices to changes in market conditions, is the primary mechanism by which markets function and by which the three most basic questions get answered: what to produce, how much to produce and for whom to produce. To the behaviour of price and price system,...

The marketplace, along with its price system, is the single most important institution in a western-style free enterprise economy. The ability of prices to adjust to changes in supply and demand conditions enables the market to function efficiently, and that ability lies behind the magical...