ACL-2International audienceBased on an original data set of more than 500,000 non-alcoholic beverage price records, we evaluate the impact on consumer prices of the ?soda tax?, an excise on drinks with added sugar or sweetener, introduced in France in January 2012. We adopt a difference in differences approach and find that the tax was gradually passed through to the prices of the taxed beverages. After 6 months of its introduction, it was fully shifted to soda prices and almost fully shifted to the prices of fruit drinks, while the pass-through for flavoured waters was incomplete. We also find that the pass-through was heterogeneous across brands and retail groups

We would like to thank Sylvie Tarrieu for excellent research assistance. We thank the Editor and two anonymous referees for many insightful and useful suggestions. We are also grateful to Olympia Bover, Emmanuel Dhyne, Huw Dixon, Roman Horvath, Francesco Lippi, Emi Nakamura, Julio Rotemberg, Patrick Sevestre, Anya Stockburger and the participants of AFSE congress (Paris, 2012) AbstractUsing micro price data, we document new facts on price rigidity in France: (i) each month 20.1% of prices are changed, which compares with 24.1% in the United States. Excluding sales, however, the fraction of prices modified each month is about the same in France and in the United States (around 17%); (ii) the distribution of price changes is quite dispersed; (iii) the frequencies of price increases and decreases contribute a lot to inflation variations, and price increases are more frequent in January even when sales are excluded; (iv) sales contribute significantly to the volatility of inflation but are much less sensitive to macroeconomic fluctuations than regular price changes; (v) during the Great Recession patterns of price adjustment were only slightly modified.JEL codes: E31, D40, L11

No abstract

We develop a theoretical framework that considers the role played by moral hazard and the diversity of networks and cultures in the choice of hiring channel. In favoritism contexts social networks, and particularly strong ties, are adopted as hiring channels for unskilled jobs and result in wage penalties, while otherwise the opposite happens. We estimate an endogenous switching model for the case of Senegal's manufacturing formal sector and find, consistently with our theoretical predictions in case of favoritism, that informal hiring channels are preferred to fill unskilled vacancies and are associated with a wage penalty, especially when ties are stronger. JEL Classification: O12; J31

We characterize the dispersion of grocery prices in France based on a large original data set of prices in more than 1500 supermarkets. On average across products, the 90 th percentile of relative prices is 17 percentage points higher than the 10 th and the mean absolute deviation from quarterly average product prices is 5%. We show that temporal price variations (including sales and promotions) explain only little of the observed price dispersion, while the spatial permanent component of price dispersion largely dominates. Price dispersion across stores in France essentially results from persistent heterogeneity in retail chains' pricing, while local conditions regarding demand or competition contribute to a much lower extent. 4