State- and time-dependent pricing

By Philip Bunn, Nicholas Bloom, Craig Menzies, Paul Mizen, Gregory Thwaites and Ivan Yotzov

We present new evidence on how firms set prices using direct questions from a large economy-wide survey of UK firms. Since 2023, 54% of firms report setting prices in a state-dependent manner, as opposed to changing prices at fixed intervals. In contrast, 44% of firms used state-dependent pricing in 2019. Smaller firms, those with a higher share of non-labour costs, and those reporting higher subjective uncertainty around sales and prices are more likely to be state-dependent. We then analyse the implications of price-setting behaviour for inflation dynamics. State-dependent firms experienced a sharper increase in price growth over 2022–23, and also a faster subsequent decline. Using evidence from a randomised survey experiment, firm-level forecast errors and local projections, we show that prices of state-dependent firms respond more strongly to cost shocks. The difference between state-dependent and time-dependent firms is furthermore larger for bigger shocks, consistent with theoretical predictions.

State- and time-dependent pricing