More Facts about Prices: France Before and During the Great Recession

Abstract

Using microprice data, we document new facts on price rigidity in France: (i) each month 20.1% of prices are changed, which compares to 24.1% in the United States-excluding sales, however, the fraction of prices modified each month is about the same in France and in the United States (around 17%); (ii) the distribution of price changes is quite dispersed; (iii) the frequencies of price increases and decreases contribute a lot to inflation variations, and price increases are more frequent in January (even when sales are excluded); (iv) sales contribute significantly to the volatility of inflation but play a minor role in the transmission of macroeconomic fluctuations to prices; and (v) during the Great Recession patterns of price adjustment were only slightly modified.