Spending Allocation Under Nominal Uncertainty: A Model of Effective Price Rigidity
研究通胀意外如何影响家庭购物行为，发现家庭会因通胀意外而更努力寻找低价，导致支出转向低加价商家，从而在灵活定价下仍能推动产出扩张，并用美国零售数据验证了支付价格通胀比标价通胀更缓慢的预测。
Abstract How do swings in inflation affect shopping behavior? We build on the idea that households’ price hunting intensifies with surprise inflation. In our model, households observe only local monopolists’ prices and must exert effort to see other sellers’ prices to eventually buy from them. This friction leads households to doubt that local price changes are idiosyncratic in nature, even when all prices change uniformly in response to a nominal aggregate shock. In such a case, households overestimate the benefits of exerting effort, reallocating more spending toward lower markup sellers. We show that, through this channel, output can expand significantly with surprise inflation, despite flexible shop pricing and acyclical posted markups. Using US retailer scanner data, we validate our model’s distinctive prediction that inflation measured over paid prices moves more slowly than inflation measured over posted prices, both unconditionally and in response to monetary policy shocks.