Discussion paper

DP6101 Sticky Prices and Monetary Policy: Evidence from Disaggregated US Data

This paper disentangles fluctuations in disaggregated prices due to macroeconomic and sectoral conditions using a factor-augmented vector autoregression estimated on a large data set. On the basis of this estimation, we establish eight facts: (1) Macroeconomic shocks explain only about 15% of sectoral inflation fluctuations; (2) The persistence of sectoral inflation is driven by macroeconomic factors; (3) While disaggregated prices respond quickly to sector-specific shocks, their responses to aggregate shocks are small on impact and larger thereafter; (4) Most prices respond with a significant delay to identified monetary policy shocks, and show little evidence of a 'price puzzle'' contrary to existing studies based on traditional VARs; (5) Categories in which consumer prices fall the most following a monetary policy shock tend to be those in which quantities consumed fall the least; (6) The observed dispersion in the reaction of producer prices is relatively well explained by the degree of market power; (7) Prices in sectors with volatile idiosyncratic shocks react rapidly to aggregate monetary policy shocks; (8) The sector-specific components of prices and quantities move in opposite directions.

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Citation

Giannoni, M, I Mihov and J Boivin (2007), ‘DP6101 Sticky Prices and Monetary Policy: Evidence from Disaggregated US Data‘, CEPR Discussion Paper No. 6101. CEPR Press, Paris & London. https://cepr.org/publications/dp6101