Business cycle models with sticky prices and endegenous firm entry make novel predictions on the transmission of shocks through the extensive margin of investment. This paper tests some of these predictions using a vector autoregression with model-based sign restrictions. We find a positive and...

This paper presents new evidence on the formation of producer prices based on a onetime survey that was conducted on a sample of 1200 German firms in manufacturing in June 2004. Most of the firms have price-setting power and apply mark-up pricing. Indexation is negligible. Fixed nominal...

This paper presents new evidence on the formation of producer prices. The database combines a one-time survey that was conducted in June 2004 on a sample of 1,200 firms in manufacturing and time-series information on price adjustment of the same firms from a business-tendency survey. The share...

This paper analyses the role of bank-related constraints in explaining the sharp slowdown in bank lending to non-financial corporations in Germany during the recent financial crisis. We use a panel approach based on a unique data set which matches the individual responses of the banks...

Using a unique German firm-level data set, this paper is the first to jointly study the cyclical properties of the cross-sections of firm-level real value added and Solow residual innovations, as well as capital and employment adjustment. We find two new business cycle facts: 1) The...

We characterize optimal monetary policy in a New Keynesian search-and-matching model where multiple-worker firms satisfy demand in the short run by adjusting hours per worker. Imperfect product market competition and search frictions reduce steady state hours per worker below the efficient...

This paper surveys existing factor forecast applications for real economic activity and inflation by means of a meta-analysis and contributes to the current debate on the determinants of the forecast performance of large-scale dynamic factor models relative to other models. We find that, on...

This paper discusses a factor model for estimating monthly GDP using a large number of monthly and quarterly time series in real-time. To take into account the different periodicities of the data and missing observations at the end of the sample, the factors are estimated by applying an EM...