Economists have taken a number of different approaches to analyze the behavior of retail prices. Anil Kashyap of the University of Chicago examined prices in consumer catalogs. In particular, he looked at the prices of 12 selected goods from L.L. Bean, Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI), and The Orvis Company, Inc. Kashyap tracked several goods over time, including several varieties of shoes, blankets, chamois shirts, binoculars, and a fishing rod and fly. He found considerable price stickiness. Prices of the goods he tracked were typically fixed for a year or more (even though the catalogs came out every six months). When prices did eventually change, Kashyap observed a mixture of both large and small changes. During periods of high inflation, prices tended to change more frequently, as we might expect.
Mark Bils of the University of Rochester and Peter Klenow of Stanford University examined the frequency of price changes for 350 categories of goods and services covering about 70 percent of consumer spending, based on unpublished data from the BLS for 1995 to 1997. Compared with previous studies they found more frequent price changes, with half of goods prices lasting less than 4.3 months. Some categories of prices changed much more frequently. Price changes for tomatoes occurred about every three weeks. And some, like coin-operated laundries, changed prices on average only every 6 ½ years or so.