Cyclical Flucuation of Markups in Japanese Manufacuring Industries

我们探讨了有关日本制造业加价周期性波动的更广泛问题。我们的主要发现总结如下：(1)我们发现，在日本制造业中，加价通常是顺周期的。这一趋势在统计上是显着的，在替代的制造价格估计程序下是稳健的。(2)加价通常对竞争进口产品的价格变化敏感。在进口价格竞争的估计系数显著的行业中，加价的平均反应弹性在2左右。(3)我们估计了一个考虑了财务约束对定价的影响以及客户和供应商之间的利润分享效应的贸易信用企业间交易模型。我们发现，当企业受到财务约束时，企业降低了材料和中间投入的影子价格，并使用贸易信贷为购买提供资金。我们还发现，行业间贸易密切的行业之间的加价相关性更高、更显著。这与顺周期加价波动是一致的。(4)加价波动的另一个重要来源是价格刚性。我们发现了强有力的价格刚性。我们还发现，刚性是高度不对称的：价格下行的刚性远远大于向上的刚性。尽管这往往会降低加价的顺周期性，但我们发现，下行刚性直到最近才强烈显现，主要是因为日本相当稳定和可观的通胀。

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.