This paper explores the behavior of profits in the four largest euro area countries (Germany, France, Italy and Spain) and the euro area as a whole, while at the same time considering three main sectors (manufacturing, construction and services) in each economy over the period 1988–2010. The...

In comparison with the large literature on house prices, housing investments have been studied far less. This paper investigates the behavior of private residential investments for the six largest European economies, namely: Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom....

To what extent does the availability of credit depend on monetary policy? And, does this relationship vary with bank characteristics? Based on a common source of balance sheet data for the four largest economies of the euro area over the period 1999-2011, we uncover three main regularities....

This paper examines the time varying dispersion in city house price levels across the four biggest euro area countries compared with those in the United States. Using available city-level data over the period 1987-2008, it tests for price convergence and analyses key factors explaining price...

Taking the mean-variance portfolio model as a benchmark, we compute the optimally diversified portfolio for banks located in France, Germany, the U.K., and the U.S. under different assumptions about currency hedging. We compare these optimal portfolios to the actual cross-border assets of banks...

This paper studies the role of inflation in the determination of financial asset prices. We estimate an Intertemporal Capital Asset Pricing Model à la Merton (1973), with inflation as an independent source of risk, for France and Germany. Our study also allows us to evaluate how the different...

This paper presents the French country block of the ESCB Multi-Country Model for the euro area, which has been built in collaboration by the ECB and the Banque de France. The theoretical structure of the model is in line with most current macroeconometric models, i.e. supply factors determine...

This paper uses disaggregated CPI time series to show that a break in the mean of French inflation occurred in the mid-eighties and that the 1983 monetary policy shift mostly accounted for it. CPI average yearly growth declined from nearly 11% before the break date (May 1985) to 2.1% after. No...

Recent theoretical research has studied extensively the link between wage setting and monetary policymaking in unionized economies. This paper addresses the question of the role of monetary uncertainty from both an empirical and theoretical point of view. Our analysis is based on a simple model...

This paper examines heterogeneity in price stickiness using a large, original, set of individual price data collected at the retail level for the computation of the French CPI. To that end, we estimate, at a very high level of disaggregation, competing-risks duration models that distinguish...