The inflation measure used by the European Central Bank excludes housing costs that are borne by home owners even though they make up more than a tenth of household final consumption expenditure in the euro area. Has the exclusion of owner-occupied housing costs driven a wedge between the...

This paper is concerned with how stylised differences in monetary policy transmission mechanisms and product and labour market rigidities between the US and euro-area economies affect their resilience to temporary shocks. To address this issue, a small general equilibrium model with long-run...

This study analyses the impact of economic catching-up on annual inflation rates in the European Union with a special focus on the new member countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Using an array of estimation methods, we show that the Balassa-Samuelson effect is not an important driver of...