We study cross-country price differences in the European market for new passenger cars based on detailed pricing and technical data. Car prices in Europe converged until the year 2003, but not thereafter. Within the EU 15 countries the price range of the median model in 2004 was close to 20...

We study cross-country price differences in the European market for new passenger cars based on detailed pricing and technical data. Car prices in Europe converged until the year 2003, but not thereafter. Within the EU 15 countries the price range of the median model in 2004 was close to 20...

The paper identifies the business models followed by banks in the euro area, utilising a proprietary dataset collected in the context of the supervisory reporting of the Single Supervisory Mechanism. The concept of a 'business model' has been neglected by economic theory and is defined here with...

How do the complex institutions involved in wage setting affect wage changes? The International Wage Flexibility Project provides new microeconomic evidence on how wages change for continuing workers. We analyze individuals’ earnings in 31 different data sets from sixteen countries, from which...

I describe insights into wage dynamics and downward wage rigidity obtained from more than two hundred interviews with businesspeople, labor leaders, and various labor market intermediaries and made in the early 1990s in the Northeast of the United States. I explain the morale explanation for...

Recent micro studies have documented extensive downward nominal wage rigidity (DNWR) for job stayers in many OECD countries, but the effect on aggregate variables remains disputed. Using data for hourly nominal wages, we explore the existence of DNWR on wages at the industry level in 19 OECD...

This paper documents nominal wage stickiness using an original quarterly firm-level dataset. We use the ACEMO survey, which reports the base wage for up to 12 employee categories in French firms over the period 1998 to 2005, and obtain the following main results. First, the quarterly frequency...

This paper investigates the wage-setting behaviour of Irish firms. We place particular emphasis on the use of flexible pay components and examine how these allow firms to deal with shocks requiring a reduction in costs without having to cut base wages. The results presented in this paper are...

Following the approach recently developed for the International Wage Flexibility Project (IWFP), the paper presents new estimates of downward real and nominal wage rigidity for Hungary. Results suggest that nominal rigidity is more prominent in Hungary than real rigidity. When compared to other...

We quantify the effects of wage bargaining shocks on macroeconomic aggregates using a structural vector auto-regression model for Germany. We identify exogenous variation in bargaining power from episodes of minimum wage introduction and industrial disputes. This narrative information...