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We analyze the behaviour of prices using a large disaggregated data set for Poland during transition from a planned to a market economy. The size of price changes and the frequency of adjustment both fall as the inflation rate declines. Price setters follow a mixture of state-and time-contingent policies. We find that price setters are forward-looking. Intermarket price variability increases with inflation and the effect of expected inflation is much stronger than the effect of unexpected inflation. So the bottom line is this: it takes sellers of sausage, eggs, toothpaste, vacuum cleaners, car-wash operators etc. just a few years to figure out how to adjust prices in a market environment. Our results support both the menu cost, and the rational expectations, hypotheses.

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The paper studies the effect of inflation on price behaviour using price data from Canadian daily newspapers. We test the Sheshinski and Weiss (1977) monopoly price adjustment model on a sample of monopolistic as well as oligopolistic newspapers, in contrast to earlier studies that used data from oligopolistic or monopolistically competitive markets. The results depend crucially on the assumptions about how often the firm collects information and revises its optimal pricing policy. With infrequent policy revisions, the results for monopoly newspapers support the model. The results for oligopoly newspapers are similar.

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