Inflation and Costly Price Adjustment: A Study of Canadian Newspaper Prices

Abstract

The paper studies the effect of inflation on price behaviour using price data from Canadian daily newspapers. We test the Sheshinski and Weiss (1977) monopoly price adjustment model on a sample of monopolistic as well as oligopolistic newspapers, in contrast to earlier studies that used data from oligopolistic or monopolistically competitive markets. The results depend crucially on the assumptions about how often the firm collects information and revises its optimal pricing policy. With infrequent policy revisions, the results for monopoly newspapers support the model. The results for oligopoly newspapers are similar.