We present empirical evidence of the extent of wage rigidity in the euro area and European countries derived from longitudinal data on individuals. Wage rigidity is measured by the elasticity of individual real wages with respect to local unemployment. The results suggest that the elasticity is...

This paper investigates the effects of monetary policy on firms' investment behaviour. The analysis relies on a comprehensive database of Belgian firms covering all sectors of economic activity and firms of all sizes. We proceed in two steps. First, we estimate a reduced-form investment equation...

Using individual firm data, this study analyzes the credit channel in Austria. The estimation is based on an accelerator specification of investment demand augmented by the liquidity ratio and a firm specific user cost of capital. The results show that there is a credit channel in Austria...

We estimate the effect of demand and price uncertainty on firms’ investment decisions from a panel of manufacturing firms. Uncertainty measures are derived from firms’ subjective qualitative expectations. They are close to their theoretical counterparts, the variances of future demand and...

The aim of the paper is to analyse the factors behind the rapid trade integration of the Central and Eastern European countries with the euro area in the past ten years and to gauge the potential for further integration. We use as benchmark an enhanced gravity model estimated with a large sample...

The rapid transition of China from a closed agricultural society to an industrial powerhouse has been associated with a rapid increase in the share of China in world trade. As the world is taking the full measure of this phenomenon, tensions have been arising ranging from holding China partly...

In this paper we study the determinants of sovereign debt credit ratings using rating notations from the three main international rating agencies, for the period 1995-2005. We employ panel estimation and random effects ordered probit approaches to assess the explanatory power of several...

Although many papers have already proposed empirical models of currency crises, the timing of such crises has received relatively little attention so far. Most papers use indeed a static specification and impose the same lag structure across all explanatory variables. This, by construction,...

The theory of liquidity management under uncertainty predicts that, under certain conditions, commercial banks will accumulate minimum reserve requirements linearly over the reserve maintenance period. This prediction is empirically tested using daily data (from March 2004 until February 2007)...

This paper analyses the impact of loan market competition on the interest rates applied by euro area banks to loans and deposits during the 1994-2004 period, using a novel measure of competition called the Boone indicator. We find evidence that stronger competition implies significantly lower...