Pricing Under Fairness Concerns
提出一种基于顾客公平关切的定价理论，假设顾客厌恶价格大幅高于成本，且企业定价时考虑这一因素。由于顾客无法直接观察成本，当成本上升导致价格上涨时，顾客会部分地将涨价归因于加价增加，从而感到不公平；企业预期到这一反应会抑制涨价幅度，导致成本传导不完全，价格呈现粘性。该理论嵌入新凯恩斯模型后能解释货币非中性、短期菲利普斯曲线等宏观现象。
Abstract This paper proposes a theory of pricing premised upon the assumptions that customers dislike unfair prices—those marked up steeply over cost—and that firms take these concerns into account when setting prices. Because they do not observe firms’ costs, customers must extract costs from prices. The theory assumes that customers infer less than rationally: When a price rises due to a cost increase, customers partially misattribute the higher price to a higher markup—which they find unfair. Firms anticipate this response and trim their price increases, which drives the passthrough of costs into prices below one: Prices are somewhat rigid. Embedded in a New Keynesian model as a replacement for the usual pricing frictions, our theory produces monetary nonneutrality: When monetary policy loosens and inflation rises, customers misperceive markups as higher and feel unfairly treated; firms mitigate this perceived unfairness by reducing their markups; in general equilibrium, employment rises. The theory also features a hybrid short-run Phillips curve, realistic impulse responses of output and employment to monetary and technology shocks, and an upward-sloping long-run Phillips curve.