In this paper we analyze the development of house prices for eight different countries over the period 1970-2003. First we look at real house price dynamics of the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Belgium. After discussing the observable...

We analyze the effect of the business cycle on price dispersion in Europe . Five decades of price level dispersion data for Europe enable us to distinguish short-term influences from long-term influences like market integration. We find that at the business cycle frequency, price dispersion...

We first sketch how central banks have used unconventional monetary policy measures by using three indicators based on the composition of the balance sheet of eleven central banks. Our analysis suggests that although the ECB's balance sheet has increased dramatically during the crisis, the...

This paper studies the transmission of monetary policy to macroeconomic variables in three new EU Member States in comparison with that in the euro area with structural time-varying coefficient vector autoregressions. In line with the Lucas Critique reduced-form models like standard VARs are not...

This paper studies the effects of more than 40 years of European integration on prices. Up to now, most empirical research in this area has been micro-based. We follow a macro approach. On the basis of scaled HICP strong evidence is found for price convergence in Europe, especially in the 1960s...

Since the mid-nineties, usage of the debit card by Dutch consumers has increased considerably. While accounting for three quarters of the total value of retail sales in the early nineties, in 2004 the value share of cash payments had fallen to about two quarters. If the cash to payment card...

Inflation differentials resulting from EMU enlargement have so far mostly been discussed within the Balassa-Samuelson framework, i.e. resulting from inflation in nontradable goods. We analyse the inflationary consequences of convergenceof tradable goods' prices. Using disaggregated price level...

One of the key advances of the internet age is the increase in transparency. Does high price transparency imply that consumers in different countries pay the same price for similar goods? We compare prices for new, tradable goods sold via the internet auction site eBay. We find ample evidence...

In 2005, some 25,000 counterfeit euro banknotes were identified in the Netherlands, representing a fictitious amount of two million euro. In collaboration with the TNO research institute, DNB has investigated how accurately cash handlers and consumers with no cash handler experience can...