L11 - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms

• The (Mis)Allocation of Corporate News

  Staff Working Paper 2024-47 Xing Guo, Alistair Macaulay, Wenting Song

  We study how the distribution of information supply by the news media affects the macroeconomy. We find that media coverage focuses particularly on the largest firms, and that firms’ equity financing and investment increase after media coverage. But these equity and investment responses are largest among small, rarely covered firms. Our quantitative studies highlight that the aggregate effects of media coverage depend crucially on how that coverage is allocated.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets, Firm dynamics JEL Code(s): D, D2, D22, D6, D61, L, L1, L11, L2, L20

• An Anatomy of Firms’ Political Speech

  Staff Working Paper 2024-37 Pablo Ottonello, Wenting Song, Sebastian Sotelo

  We study the distribution of political speech across U.S. firms. We develop a measure of political engagement based on firms’ communications (earning calls, regulatory filings, and social media) by training a large language model to identify statements that contain political opinions. Using these data, we document five facts about firms’ political engagement.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Firm dynamics, Market structure and pricing, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): D, D2, D22, D6, D63, G, G4, G41, L, L1, L11, L2, L20

• Pricing behaviour and inflation during the COVID-19 pandemic: Insights from consumer prices microdata

  Staff Analytical Note 2024-6 Olga Bilyk, Mikael Khan, Olena Kostyshyna

  Using the microdata underlying the Canadian consumer price index, we study how often and by how much firms changed their prices during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that the surge in inflation was mainly associated with retailers raising prices much more often than before. We also find that more recently, corporate price-setting behaviour appears to be approaching pre-pandemic norms.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Firm dynamics, Inflation and prices, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): D, D2, D22, E, E3, E31, L, L1, L11

• Digitalization: Prices of Goods and Services

  Staff Discussion Paper 2023-27 Vivian Chu, Tatjana Dahlhaus, Christopher Hajzler

  This paper outlines and assesses the various channels through which digitalization can affect prices of goods and services.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Digitalization, Inflation and prices, Market structure and pricing, Monetary policy JEL Code(s): D, D2, E, E3, E31, E5, E52, L, L1, L11

• Digitalization: Productivity

  Staff Discussion Paper 2023-17 Jeffrey Mollins, Temel Taskin

  We examine the relationship between digitalization and productivity, the factors that influence this relationship, and how digitalization’s effect on productivity could change firm behaviour.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Digitalization, Productivity JEL Code(s): E, E2, L, L1, L11, O, O4, O47, O5, O51

• The contribution of firm profits to the recent rise in inflation

  Staff Analytical Note 2023-12 Panagiotis Bouras, Christian Bustamante, Xing Guo, Jacob Short

  We measure the contribution to inflation from the growth in markups of Canadian firms. The dynamics of inflation and markups suggest that changes in markups could account for less than one-tenth of inflation in 2021. Further, they suggest that peak inflation was driven primarily by changes in the costs of firms.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Firm dynamics, Inflation and prices, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): D, D2, D22, D4, E, E3, E31, L, L1, L11

• Market Concentration and Uniform Pricing: Evidence from Bank Mergers

  Staff Working Paper 2021-9 João Granja, Nuno Paixão

  We show that US banks price deposits almost uniformly across their branches and that this pricing practice is more important than increases in local market concentration in explaining the deposit rate dynamics following bank mergers.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial institutions, Financial system regulation and policies, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): D, D4, G, G2, G20, G21, G28, G3, G34, L, L1, L11

• Why Fixed Costs Matter for Proof-of-Work Based Cryptocurrencies

  Staff Working Paper 2020-27 Rodney J. Garratt, Maarten van Oordt

  Can Bitcoin survive? Some say it will become vulnerable to attacks as the rewards for processing Bitcoin transactions continue to decline. The economics of fixed costs suggest the specialized hardware used to mine Bitcoin may be key to its survival.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Digital currencies and fintech, Payment clearing and settlement systems JEL Code(s): G, G1, G10, L, L1, L11

• Multi-Product Pricing: Theory and Evidence from Large Retailers in Israel

  Staff Working Paper 2020-12 Marco Bonomo, Carlos Carvalho, Oleksiy Kryvtsov, Sigal Ribon, Rodolfo Rigato

  Standard theories of price adjustment are based on the problem of a single-product firm, and therefore they may not be well suited to analyze price dynamics in the economy with multiproduct firms.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Inflation and prices, Market structure and pricing, Monetary policy JEL Code(s): D, D2, D21, D22, E, E3, E31, E5, E52, L, L1, L11

• Amazon Effects in Canadian Online Retail Firm-Product-Level Data

  Staff Working Paper 2019-42 Alex Chernoff

  I use firm-product-level data for Canadian online retailers to study how product scope (the average number of product categories per firm) evolved from 1999 to 2012. During this period, product scope dropped monotonically from 59 to 5 product categories.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Firm dynamics, Service sector JEL Code(s): D, D2, D22, L, L1, L11, L8, L81