ier hit-u acjp/~ifd / Price Rigidity and Market Structure: Evidence from the Japanese Scanner Data

This paper investigates price rigidity arise out of the speci c market structures, such as degree of market concentration and pricing decisions of retailers and manufacturers. Using Japanese scanner data that contains transaction prices and sales for more than 1,600 commodity groups from 1988 to 2008, we nd statistically signi cant negative correlation between the degree of market concentration and the frequency of price changes, including both bargain price changes and regular price changes. The results of two-way analysis of variance suggests that the variation of the frequency of price changes depends on the di erences among manufacturers as well as those among retailers