Foreign Currency Pricing

A special case of dollarization is analyzed: quotation of prices in dollars. The proposed explanation is price stickiness: when price adjustment is costly, forms can prefer to fix their prices in a stable foreign currency rather than in an unstable domestic one in order to avoid frequent price changes. The proposed model shows how the choice of price-setting currency made by a firm depends on the in ation rate, exchange rate volatility, the pricing currency of competitors and input suppliers, and the shape of the demand function. The model predicts that there are two Nash equilibria in the economy populated by symmetric firms: an equilibrium with uniform ruble pricing and an equilibrium with uniform dollar pricing. It is shown that in economy with less competition a smaller increase in inflation is needed to make an individual firm deviate from the equilibrium with uniform ruble pricing and turn to pricing in dollars.