Cyclical Flucuation of Markups in Japanese Manufacuring Industries

我们探讨了有关日本制造业利润周期性波动的更广泛问题。我们的主要调查结果概述如下。(1)我们发现，在日本制造业中，加价通常是顺周期的。这种趋势在makrups的替代估计程序下具有统计学显著性和稳健性。(2)加价通常对竞争进口商品的价格变动敏感。在竞争进口价格的估计系数显著的行业中，加价的平均反应弹性约为2。(3)我们估计了一个模型，企业间的交易与贸易信贷，将金融约束的作用，定价和客户和供应商之间的利润分享的影响。我们发现，当企业处于融资约束下，企业会降低原材料和中间投入的影子价格，并使用贸易信贷为采购融资。我们还发现，在行业间贸易密切的行业之间，利润率的相关性更高，更显着。这被认为是与顺周期加价波动相一致。(4)加价波动的另一个重要来源是价格刚性。我们发现了强大而稳健的价格刚性。我们还发现，刚性是高度不对称的：价格向下的刚性远大于向上的刚性。尽管这往往会使加价不那么顺周期，但我们发现，直到最近，下行刚性才强烈地表现出来，主要是因为日本相当稳定和可观的通货膨胀。

We explored broader issues concerning cyclical fluctuation of markups in Japanese manufacturing industries. Our major findings are summarized below.(1) We find that markups are generally pro-cyclical in Japanese manufacturing. This tendency is statistically significant and robust under alternative estimation procedures of makrups.(2) Markups are generally sesnsitive to changes in prices of competing imports. The average response elasticity of markups is around 2 among industries in which the estimated coefficients for the competing import prices are significant.(3) We estimated a model of inter-firm transactions with trade credits, incorporating the role of financial constraints on pricing and the effect of profit sharing between customer and supplier firms. We found that the firms reduce the shadow price of material and intermediate inputs when the firm is under financial constraint and use trade credit to finance the purchase. We also found that the correlations of markups are higher and more significant between industries with close inter-industry trades. This is found to be consistent with procyclical markup fluctuations.(4) Another important source of fluctuations in markups is price rigidity. We found strong and robust price rigidity. We also found that the rigidity is highly asymmetric : prices are far more rigid downward than upward. Although this tends to make markups less pro-cyclical, we found that the downward rigidity did not manifest itself strongly until recently mainly because of fairly steady and sizable inflation in Japan.