Are all prices in the economy equally inflexible? Which ones show large amounts of short-run flexibility? Which ones show a great deal of inflexibility over months or years?

Short Answer

Expert verified

No, not all prices in the economy are equally inflexible. The price of some goods adjusts more quickly than others.

Natural gas, corn, and airline tickets are goods whose prices show large amounts of short-run flexibility.

Haircuts, newspapers, and rental houses are some of the goods and services whose prices show a great deal of inflexibility over months and years.

Step by step solution

01

Concept of price inflexibility

The demand changes from time to time for goods in the market. The good price should also change according to the change in demand to remain at an equilibrium position where the supplied quantity is equal to the amount demanded. But prices are unable to adjust to these changes quickly. This resistive property of price is referred to as price inflexibility.

02

Example of goods with short-run price flexibility

Goods from the agriculture and retail sectors adjust their prices within 3 to 4 months. Goods such as natural gas, corn, and flight tickets are some of the goods whose prices adjust to the demand of the good quickly. The price of natural gas adjusts to the demand within days, the price of corn adjusts to the demand within weeks, and the price of flight tickets adjusts to the demand within hours.

03

Example of goods with price inflexibility

Goods whose prices show a great deal of inflexibility over months or years: Goods from the service and manufacturing sector usually take 8 months to a year to adjust their prices with the change in demand. For example, goods such as haircuts, newspapers, and rental houses take around a year to adjust their prices with demand changes. It shows that the price of these goods is highly inflexible to the changing demand.

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Most popular questions from this chapter

Are labor costs a major fraction of the typical firm’s overall production costs? How does wage stickiness cause price stickiness? Discuss why firms are averse to cutting wages and salaries during a business downturn.

Catalog companies are committed to selling at the prices printed in their catalogs. If a catalog company finds its inventory of sweaters rising, what does that tell you about the demand for sweaters? Was it unexpectedly high, unexpectedly low, or as expected? If the company could change the price of sweaters, would it raise the price, lower the price, or keep the price the same? Given that the company cannot change the price of sweaters, however, consider the number of sweaters it orders each month from the company that manufactures the sweaters. If inventories become very high, will the catalog company increase orders, decrease orders, or keep orders the same? Given what the catalog company does with its orders, what is likely to happen to employment and output at the sweater manufacturer?

Suppose that Glitter Gulch, a gold mining firm, increased its sales revenues on newly mined gold from \(100 million to \)200 million between one year and the next. Assuming that the price of gold increased by 100 percent over the same period, by what numerical amount did Glitter Gulch’s real output change? If the price of gold had not changed, what would have been the change in Glitter Gulch’s real output?

Why, in general, do shocks force people to make changes? Give at least two examples from your own experience.

If an economy has fully flexible prices and demand unexpectedly increases, you would expect the economy’s real GDP to:

  1. increase.

  2. decrease.

  3. remain the same.

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