TY  - JOUR
AU  - Lach,Saul
AU  - Tsiddon,Daniel
TI  - Staggering and Synchronization in Price-Setting: Evidence from Multipro-duct Firms
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 4759
PY  - 1994
Y2  - June 1994
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w4759
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w4759.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Saul Lach
Department of Economics
Hebrew University
Jerusalem, 91905
ISRAEL
Tel: 972-2-5883253
Fax: 972-2-5816071
E-Mail: saul.lach@huji.ac.il

Daniel Tsiddon
Department of Economics
Tel-Aviv University
Ramat-Aviv
Tel-Aviv  69978  ISRAEL
Tel: NA
E-Mail: tsiddon@post.tau.ac.il
AB  - Most of the theoretical literature on price-setting behavior deals with the special case in which only a single price is changed. At the retail-store level, at least, where dozens of products are sold by a single price-setter, price-setting policies are not formulated for individual products.  This feature of economic behavior raises a host of questions whose answers carry interesting implications.  Are price setters staggered in the timing of price changes?  Are price changes of different products synchronized within the store?  If so, is this a result of aggregate shocks or of the presence of a store- specific component in the cost of adjusting prices?  Can observed small changes in prices be rationalized by a menu cost model?  We exploit the multiproduct dimension of the dataset on prices used in Lach and Tsiddon (1992a) to explore several of these and other issues. To the best of our knowledge this is the first empirical work on this subject.
ER  -