Prices that end with 9, also known as psychological price points, are common, comprising about 70% of the retail prices. They are also more rigid than other prices. We take advantage of a natural experiment to document an emergence of a new price ending that has the same effects as 9-endings. In...

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...

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...

We offer the first direct evidence of an implicit contract in a goods market. The evidence comes from the market for Coca-Cola. Since implicit contracts are unobservable, we adopt a narrative approach to demonstrate that the Coca-Cola Company left a written evidence of the implicit contract with...

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 don't change. We study a situation where producers adjust the quantity per...

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 don't change. 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...