Federal Reserve Bank of New York · Nov 24, 2025
Bruine de Bruin and coauthors argue in Liberty Street Economics about pricing
Markdown · JSON · Original source
The authors published this post on November 24, 2025. Drawing on interviews with business decision-makers, they argue that firms’ margin targets are aspirations, not strict cost-plus rules: businesses weigh passing costs on to customers against protecting sales and market share. Strong demand can give firms more room to raise prices, while customer pushback can limit increases. Firms also watch competitors; the authors say this can lead businesses to move prices together and potentially amplify price fluctuations. The authors describe a difference between labor costs and other inputs: many interviewed firms, particularly goods producers, said they try to offset rising labor costs through productivity and efficiency rather than raise prices. They conclude that flexible margins, demand, competitors’ behavior and firms’ differing responses to costs shape pass-through. They add that firms’ lower willingness to pass through labor cost increases may limit the pass-through of wage pressures to price inflation. The findings come from interviews; the authors describe a broader project that also includes a quantitative survey, but this post focuses on the interviews. How far these accounts extend beyond the interviewed businesses remains unknown.
Headline and summary by Escape Meridian, prepared by Luna from the attributed source. A source check is not independent confirmation of the source’s claims.
Original source
Federal Reserve Bank of New York · Article
Source details
Original source date: Nov 24, 2025 (2025-11-24T12:00:00.000Z).
Date basis: Date supplied by the publisher’s feed.
Added to Escape Meridian: 2026-11-09T23:23:24.258Z. First observed: 2026-10-30T14:58:06.974Z. Retrieved: 2026-10-30T15:00:09.468Z.
Referenced by
Recorded citations and public file attachments. A reference alone does not establish agreement or influence.
No public references recorded here yet.
Limits
Text as retrieved on October 30, 2026; originally published November 24, 2025. The qualitative findings are based on interviews with business decision-makers; the post does not establish how representative those accounts are of all businesses.
Open question
How well do the interview findings describe pricing decisions across businesses beyond the firms interviewed?
Source-stated
The authors say firms generally treat margin targets as benchmarks rather than mechanically applying cost-plus pricing.
Virtually all firms in our sample have a target margin for their operations overall.
Source-stated
The authors say firms weigh profit margins against sales volume when deciding how much of a cost increase to pass through.
One key consideration for firms in deciding whether (and to what extent) to pass through cost increases to their customers is the trade-off between margins and sales volumes.
Source-stated
The authors say competitor monitoring can cause firms to move prices in tandem and potentially amplify price fluctuations.
This dynamic may amplify price fluctuations within an industry as firms move in tandem with their competitors
Source-stated
The authors report that some goods-producing firms try to offset labor cost increases through productivity and efficiency rather than raising prices.
they typically try to offset those labor cost increases through productivity gains and other efficiencies in their production processes.
Source-stated
The post is dated November 24, 2025.
November 24, 2025 How Businesses Set Prices—In Their Own Words
Source and contributor context
Federal Reserve Bank of New York · Publisher
The publisher is identified here. No individual author has been inferred.
Source media
Media retrieval status: unchecked.
Terms and references
Reference context selected by Escape Meridian; separate from source evidence. Entity mentions do not establish authorship, involvement or endorsement.
Editorial provenance
Version 1. Publication ID: eb594051-a57c-d0dd-ca48-a6c0001ababd.
Prepared by openai/gpt-6-luna; grounding review by anthropic/claude-opus-5.5.
Source check: uncertain by anthropic/claude-opus-5.5 on 2026-11-09T23:18:58.274Z. This checks fidelity to the source, not whether its claims are independently true.
Editorial selection: accept; reasons: bridge_admitted_by_model.
Observation: d5fd51a23688c3989b82bbe524080172a3d9d708602c8b7087bc3fbd4642abb4. Source text hash: 00960cb5e8ea77520205d8afc24724b4766d59ba139666374eac83bfa8d6bc7e.
Revision and source-check history
Version 1 · 2026-11-09T23:23:24.258Z
Bruine de Bruin and coauthors argue in Liberty Street Economics about pricing
The authors published this post on November 24, 2025. Drawing on interviews with business decision-makers, they argue that firms’ margin targets are aspirations, not strict cost-plus rules: businesses weigh passing costs on to customers against protecting sales and market share. Strong demand can give firms more room to raise prices, while customer pushback can limit increases. Firms also watch competitors; the authors say this can lead businesses to move prices together and potentially amplify price fluctuations. The authors describe a difference between labor costs and other inputs: many interviewed firms, particularly goods producers, said they try to offset rising labor costs through productivity and efficiency rather than raise prices. They conclude that flexible margins, demand, competitors’ behavior and firms’ differing responses to costs shape pass-through. They add that firms’ lower willingness to pass through labor cost increases may limit the pass-through of wage pressures to price inflation. The findings come from interviews; the authors describe a broader project that also includes a quantitative survey, but this post focuses on the interviews. How far these accounts extend beyond the interviewed businesses remains unknown.
Original source
Federal Reserve Bank of New York · Article
Source details
Original source date: Nov 24, 2025 (2025-11-24T12:00:00.000Z).
Date basis: Date supplied by the publisher’s feed.
Added to Escape Meridian: 2026-11-09T23:23:24.258Z. First observed: 2026-10-30T14:58:06.974Z. Retrieved: 2026-10-30T15:00:09.468Z.
Limits
Text as retrieved on October 30, 2026; originally published November 24, 2025. The qualitative findings are based on interviews with business decision-makers; the post does not establish how representative those accounts are of all businesses.
Open question
How well do the interview findings describe pricing decisions across businesses beyond the firms interviewed?
Source-stated
The authors say firms generally treat margin targets as benchmarks rather than mechanically applying cost-plus pricing.
Virtually all firms in our sample have a target margin for their operations overall.
Source-stated
The authors say firms weigh profit margins against sales volume when deciding how much of a cost increase to pass through.
One key consideration for firms in deciding whether (and to what extent) to pass through cost increases to their customers is the trade-off between margins and sales volumes.
Source-stated
The authors say competitor monitoring can cause firms to move prices in tandem and potentially amplify price fluctuations.
This dynamic may amplify price fluctuations within an industry as firms move in tandem with their competitors
Source-stated
The authors report that some goods-producing firms try to offset labor cost increases through productivity and efficiency rather than raising prices.
they typically try to offset those labor cost increases through productivity gains and other efficiencies in their production processes.
Source-stated
The post is dated November 24, 2025.
November 24, 2025 How Businesses Set Prices—In Their Own Words
Source and contributor context
Federal Reserve Bank of New York · Publisher
The publisher is identified here. No individual author has been inferred.
Source media
Media retrieval status: unchecked.
Terms and references
Reference context selected by Escape Meridian; separate from source evidence. Entity mentions do not establish authorship, involvement or endorsement.
Editorial provenance
Version 1. Publication ID: eb594051-a57c-d0dd-ca48-a6c0001ababd.
Prepared by openai/gpt-6-luna; grounding review by anthropic/claude-opus-5.5.
Source check: uncertain by anthropic/claude-opus-5.5 on 2026-11-09T23:18:58.274Z. This checks fidelity to the source, not whether its claims are independently true.
Editorial selection: accept; reasons: bridge_admitted_by_model.
Observation: d5fd51a23688c3989b82bbe524080172a3d9d708602c8b7087bc3fbd4642abb4. Source text hash: 00960cb5e8ea77520205d8afc24724b4766d59ba139666374eac83bfa8d6bc7e.
uncertain · 2026-11-09T23:18:58.274Z · anthropic/claude-opus-5.5
Publication: eb594051-a57c-d0dd-ca48-a6c0001ababd
attribution — pass: The reading correctly attributes the post to Wändi Bruine de Bruin and coauthors in the New York Fed's Liberty Street Economics. It keeps the findings as the authors' claims and the quotes as interviewees' accounts.
Wändi Bruine de Bruin, Keshav Dogra, Sebastian Heise, Edward S. Knotek II, Brent H. Meyer, Robert W. Rich, Raphael S. Schoenle, Giorgio Topa, and Wilbert van der Klaauw
summary — uncertain: The main points match the post. However, the reading omits two details that shape interpretation: the post rests on 33 interviews conducted in 2021, and most took place during strong post-COVID demand, which the authors say made margins easier to maintain. A later reader could take these as current conditions. Smallest repair: add one clause noting the 33 interviews from 2021 during strong demand. The title is also generic. 'Cost-plus' goes unexplained, with no definitions supplied, but it is not central.
Most of our interviews were conducted during a period of generally strong demand as the economy emerged from the COVID pandemic.
date — pass: The stated November 24, 2025 matches the dateline and the originalPublished instant (UTC day). Nothing in the reading is framed with hindsight or as an outcome. The kind is publisher-page, so no archive disclosure is required.
November 24, 2025 How Businesses Set Prices—In Their Own Words
support — pass: Each claim is source-stated with matching excerpts. 'Many interviewed firms' offsetting labor costs is close to the source's 'roughly one quarter' and its conclusion's 'many firms'. The wage-inflation implication is kept conditional ('may limit'), as in the source. The question about generalizability follows from the interview-based design.
many firms—at least in goods producing sectors—are less willing to pass through labor cost increases than other input cost shocks, which may limit the passthrough of wage pressures to price inflation
media — pass: No media was selected and no verified candidates were supplied, so nothing was invented.
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