Discussion of "Lumpy Price Adjustments: A Microeconometric Analysis" by Emmanuel Dhyne, Catherine Fuss, Hashem Pesaran, and Patrick Sevestre (2007); Presented at the Spring 2007 Conference of the Deutsche Bundesbank and the Banque De France on "Micro-Data and Macroeconomic Implications," April...

We offer the first direct evidence of an implicit contract in a goods market. The evidence comes from the market for Coca-Cola. We demonstrate that the Coca-Cola Company left a written evidence of its implicit contract with its consumers—a very explicit form of an implicit contract. The...

If producers have more information than consumers about goods’ attributes, then they may use non-price (rather than price) adjustment mechanisms and, consequently, the market may reach a new equilibrium even if prices remain sticky. We study a situation where producers adjust the quantity (per...

This is a discussion of Ratfai (2007), presented at the 2007 Macroeconomics Workshop of the Rimini Center for Economic Analysis on "The Macroeconomics of Price Setting," May 10-11, 2007, University of Bologna, Rimini, Italy.

There is evidence that 9-ending prices are more common and more rigid than other prices. We use data from three sources: a laboratory experiment, a field study, and a large US supermarket chain, to study the cognitive underpinning and the ensuing asymmetry in rigidity associated with 9-ending...

This is a discussion of the manuscript "Local News Online: Aggregators, Geo-Targeting and the Market for Local News" by L. George and C. Hogendorn, presented at the 11th Workshop on Media Economics, which was held at the Recanati Business School, Tel-Aviv University, October 9-10, 2013.

Discussion of "The Pricing Behavior of Firms in the Euro Area: New Survey Evidence" by S. Fabiani, M. Druant, I. Hernando, C. Kwapil, B. Landau, C. Loupias, F. Martins, T. Mathä, R. Sabbatini, H. Stahl, and A. Stockman (2004); Presented at the Inflation Persistence Network (IPN) Conference on...

We report that the price of a 6.5oz Coke was 5¢ from 1886 until 1959. Thus, we are documenting a nominal price rigidity that lasted more than 70 years! The case of Coca-Cola is particularly interesting because during the 70-year period there were substantial changes in the soft drink industry...

Analyzing a large weekly retail transaction price dataset, we uncover a surprising regularity—small price increases occur more frequently than small price decreases for price changes of up to about 10 cents, while there is no such asymmetry for larger price changes. The asymmetry holds for the...

The Thanksgiving-Christmas holiday period is a major sales period for US retailers. Due to higher store traffic, tasks such as restocking shelves, handling customers’ questions and inquiries, running cash registers, cleaning, and bagging, become more urgent during holidays. As a result, the...