During the 1970s and early 1980s, Spain suffered high rates of inflation but inflation declined and by 1997 inflation had fallen to approximately 2 percent. To fight inflation, Spain implemented austere monetary programs, joined the EMS in 1989, enacted central bank autonomy in 1994, and...

This paper presents original evidence on price setting in the euro area at the individual level. We use micro data on consumer (CPI) and producer (PPI) prices, as well as survey information. Our main findings are: (i) prices in the euro area are sticky and more so than in the US; (ii) there is...

The Balassa-Samuelson (BS) model is evaluated in eight of the eleven EMU countries. This model suggests that productivity differentials between traded and non-traded goods sectors generate sectoral inflation differentials (dual inflation). Furthermore, differentials in the degree of dual...

This paper studies the effect of labor market reform, in the form of reductions in firing costs and unemployment benefits, on inflation volatility. With this purpose, we build a New Keynesian model with search and matching frictions in the labor market, and estimate it using Euro Area data....

An exogenous oil price shock raises inflation and contracts output, similar to a negative productivity shock. In the standard New Keynesian model, however, this does not generate a tradeoff between inflation and output gap volatility: under a strict inflation targeting policy, the output decline...

Taking into account two salient Spanish stylized facts, namely, a persistent disinflationary process and hysteresis in the unemployment, this paper tries to answer the following question: Is a nominal permanent disinflation compatible with short-run unemployment costs but also with long-run...

Motivated by a strong degree of hysteresis in the stock of monetization observed after the end of hyperinflations, I provide a cash-and-credit model in which the use of money exhibits some persistence because individuals can establish long-lasting credit relationships. This feature helps to...

This paper reports the results of a survey carried out by the Banco de España on a sample of around 2000 Spanish firms to deepen the understanding of firms' price setting behaviour. The main findings may be summarised as follows. Most Spanish firms are price setters that use predominantly state...

Applying the concept of underlying inflation can be thought of as an attempt to capture the general trend in inflation more accurately than with readily available data on headline inflation. In this paper a number of approaches to the analysis of underlying inflation are examined from a unifying...

In this paper we consider that the relationship between nominal exchange rate and prices depends on the nature of the shocks impacting the economy. In order to identify the sources of nominal exchange rate and relative price fluctuations in Spain we impose long-run restrictions on the dynamics...