State-Dependent or Time-Dependent Pricing: Does It Matter for Recent U.S. Inflation?
基于1988-2004年美国CPI微观数据，发现价格变动频繁且幅度大，但变动概率与时间无关；通胀波动主要由价格变动幅度驱动，而非变动频率。
In the 1988–2004 microdata collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for the Consumer Price Index, price changes are frequent (every 4–7 months, depending on the treatment of sale prices) and large in absolute value (on the order of 10%). The size and timing of price changes vary considerably for a given item, but the size and probability of a price change are unrelated to the time since the last price change. Movements in aggregate inflation reflect movements in the size of price changes rather than the fraction of items changing price, because of offsetting movements in the fraction of price increases and decreases. Neither leading time-dependent models (Taylor or Calvo) nor first-generation state-dependent models match all of these facts. Some second-generation state-dependent models, however, appear broadly consistent with the empirical patterns.