Wage rises have remained stubbornly low in advanced Europe in recent years, but, at the same time, newer EU members are experiencing rapid wage acceleration. This paper investigates the drivers of this wage divergence. Econometric analysis using error correction models suggests that wage growth...

We argue that in an economy with downward nominal wage rigidity, the output gap is negative on average. Because it is more difficult to cut wages than to increase them, firms reduce employment more during downturns than they increase employment during expansions. This is demonstrated in a simple...

Despite closing output gaps and tightening labor markets, inflation has remained low in the euro area. Based on an augmented Phillips Curve framework, we find that this phenomenon-sometimes attributed to low global inflation-has been primarily caused by a remarkable persistence of inflation,...

Monetary aggregates continue to play an important role in the ECB''s policy strategy. This paper revisits the case for money, surveying the ongoing theoretical and empirical debate. The key conclusion is that an exclusive focus on non-monetary factors alone may leave the ECB with an incomplete...

A distinctive feature of market-provided services is that some of them have close substitutes at home. Households may therefore switch between consuming home and market services in response to changes in the real wage - the opportunity cost of working at home - and changes in the price of market...

We explore two issues triggered by the crisis. First, in most advanced countries, output remains far below the pre-recession trend, suggesting hysteresis. Second, while inflation has decreased, it has decreased less than anticipated, suggesting a breakdown of the relation between inflation and...

Intangible investment is growing as a share of economic activity. We present a simple framework incorporating its distinguishing characteristic of generally greater scalability and lower marginal costs than tangible investment. We show evidence that this may have contributed to more elastic...