Violating the Law of One Price: Should We Make a Federal Case Out of It?
利用美国城市间消费品价格的新数据，分析同类商品价格差异的原因，发现贸易品价格差异更大，归因于非贸易品的价格粘性，距离和名义价格粘性都是重要因素。
We use new disaggregated data on consumer prices to determine why there is variability in prices of similar goods across U.S. cities.We address questions similar to those that have arisen in the international context: is this variability purely a result of market segmentation or do sticky nominal prices play a role?We also examine how the degree of tradability of a good influences price variability.Surprisingly, we find that variability is larger for traded-goods.We attribute this finding to greater price stickiness for nontraded goods.Distance between cities accounts for a significant amount of the variation in prices between pairs of cities.But we also find that nominal price stickiness plays an even more significant role.