German metropolitan areas with more highly skilled workers became increasingly skilled between 1975 and 2003, and this has important implications for urban employment growth.Using for the first time German metropolitan areas instead of administrative regions we show that the share of college...

We analyse the role of labour mobility as a mechanism for regional adjustment in Europe. We find that only a small share of migration can be explained by economic differences. Moreover, despite European integration and structural reforms, the role of labour migration in regional adjustment has...

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...

Although some authors have suggested that monetary expansion is still possible when the monetary policy interest rate cannot be reduced further, central banks tend to avoid interest rates close to the zero lower bound. Taking into account central banks.aversion to very low interest rates, we...

The paper has two subjects. The first subject is the development of a monetary general equilibrium model with endogenous growth. By combining the two-sector endogenous growth model and the limited participation approach, the model is able to explain the empirically observed liquidity effect of...

Politicians and car owners are regularly concerned about the level of gasoline prices. Especially, Dutch gasoline prices seem to be high in an European perspective. This paper therefore analyses the developments of gasoline prices in the Netherlands and some other European countries from 1996 up...

The paper has two subjects. The first subject is the development of a monetary general equilibrium model with en- dogenous growth. By combining the two-sector endogenous growth model and the limited participation approach, the model is able to explain the empirically observed liquidity effect of...

This paper proposes testable conditions that core inflation measures should satisfy. Trend inflation indicators calculated by Banco de Portugal are tested against this background. The major conclusion is that the so-called "underlying inflation", the "10% trimmed mean", and the "25% trimmed...

This paper assesses the performance of core inflation measures based on the structural VAR approach. Since core or monetary inflation is not directly observable, we develop a monetary general equilibrium model that fits real aggregated European data and use this model to generate time series for...