this study examined the effects of trade liberalization and exchange rate changes on carbohydrate staples in nigeria. secondary data published from 1974 to 2006 on cassava exports and rice imports as well as non-tradable carbohydrate staples were used. it was hypothesized that exchange rate changes and trade liberalization via price relatives, trade intensity and nominal protection coefficient ...

The price range, defined as the difference between the highest and lowest log asset prices over a fixed sampling interval (for concreteness, we focus on a 1-day interval), has a long, colorful, and distinguished history of use as a volatility estimator. As emphasized most recently by Alizadeh, Brandt, and Diebold (2002), the range is a highly efficient volatility proxy, distilling volatility in...

We study markets with costly buyer search in which sellers simultaneously post prices. Buyers costlessly observe one or (with probability 1 q) two of the posted prices, and can accept one or pay to search again. The experiment varies q, the search cost, and the number of buyers. Equilibrium theory predicts a unified very low (high) price for q=0 (q=1) and predicts specific distributions of disp...

Noise is essential for the existence of a liquid market, and if noise traders are not present in the market, the trade volume will drop severely and an important aspect of the market philosophy will be lost. However, these noise traders bring noise to the market, and the existence of noise in prices indicates a temporary deviation in prices from their fundamental values. In particular, high-fre...

This paper explores the impact of demographic changes on the housing market in the US, 1st by reviewing the facts about the Baby Boom, 2nd by linking age and housing demand using census data for 1970 and 1980, 3rd by computing the effect of demand on price of housing and on the quantity of residential capital, and last by constructing a theoretical model to plot the predictability of the jump i...

Background: Recently introduced antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs may have advantages over older drugs but their high cost may be a major limitation to their availability. Anecdotal reports have described large differences between costs for these drugs in the US and other countries. Methods: Physicians and pharmacists from 17 countries in North America and Europe provided information on th...

We introduce heterogeneous preferences into a tractablemodel ofmonetary search to generate price dispersion, and then examine the effects of money growth on price dispersion and welfare. With buyers’ search intensity fixed, we find that money growth increases the range of (real) prices and lowers welfare as agents shift more of their consumption to less desirable goods.When buyers’search intens...

This paper reviews the literature on reference pricing (RP) in pharmaceutical markets. The RP strategy for cost containment of expenditure on drugs is analyzed as part of the procurement mechanism. We review the existing literature and the state-of-the-art regarding RP by focusing on its economic effects. In particular, we consider: (1) the institutional context and problem-related factors whic...

This paper examines the behaviour of supermarket prices in the United Kingdom, using weekly scanner data supplied by Nielsen. A number of stylised facts about pricing behaviour are uncovered. First, prices change very frequently in supermarkets, with 40% of prices changing each week, and even controlling for ‘temporary’ changes, a quarter of prices change each week. Importantly, there is eviden...