A study on behavioral dynamics of relative prices and retail market integration

在本项目中，我们分析了日本47个城市的零售和消费价格的行为动态。本研究的主要目的是，考察分散在不同地域的零售市场是否正在形成一个统一的日本市场，还是由于国内运输成本等有形和无形的市场摩擦而被分割。具体而言，我们整理了1975-2000年各类消费品和服务的零售价格数据，分析了49个城市的相对价格的行为动态。本文的主要实证结果可以概括为：（1）总体水平上的跨城市相对消费价格（即相对消费者价格指数）大多被发现是非平稳的，这意味着当包括服务价格时，日本各城市的相对购买力平价并不成立;（2）不同商品和服务的相对价格的行为动力学，特别是持续性，差异很大;（3）虽然有些商品的零售市场一体化程度越来越高，但也有相当多的产品的价格离散度一直在增加;（4）虽然特定城市价格冲击衰减的速度因商品和服务而异，部分取决于跨城市的物理距离，但仍有许多原因无法解释。总而言之，这些结果表明，日本的零售市场并不是一个完整的整体，涉及所有类型的消费品或在该领域内物理上分离的所有当地市场。换句话说，对于某些商品和城市，日本国内的零售市场仍然是分割的。

In this project, we have analyzed the behavioral dynamics of retail and consumer prices of 47 cities throughout Japan. The main purpose of our analysis is to examine whether the geographically separated retail markets are forming a single integrated Japanese market, or do they remain segmented by tangible and intangible market frictions such as transport cost that exit within the country. Specifically, we have compiled the data of retail prices of various consumer goods and services for the period of 1975-2000, and analyzed the behavioral dynamics of their relative prices across the 49 cities. The primary empirical findings can be summarized as follows : (1)the cross-city relative consumer price at the aggregate level (i.e.relative consumer price indices) are mostly found to be non-stationary, implying that the relative purchasing power parity across cities in Japan is not holding when prices of services are included ; (2)the behavioral dynamics, especially the persistence property, of the relative prices varies quite substantially across goods and services ; (3)while there are goods that exhibit an increasing degree of retail market integration, there are a substantial number of products whose price dispersion has been increasing ; (4)while the rate at which city-specific price shocks decay varies by goods and services and is determined partly by cross-city physical distance, much remains unexplained. All in all, these results suggest that retail market within Japan is not characterized as an integrated whole that involves all types of consumer goods or all local markets that are physically separated within the domain. In other words, for some goods and cities, the retail market within Japan remains segmented.