Robustness of the relationship between price variability and inflation for US manufacturing

We study the relationship between relative price variability and inflation in two different ways. We first look at product-class census unit values for five time periods between 1958 and 1982, and find evidence of a positive relationship between variability and inflation. Then we directly update the Vining and Elwertowski (1976) study for the period 1974-91, using individual commodity series from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We conclude by discussing differences across industries in price stickiness.