This paper investigates how economic conditions are associated with age-sex group specific suicide rates in a panel of 28 OECD countries over the period 1980-2002. We consider the trend and cyclical components of income, unemployment, income inequality, inflation, as well as various...

Macroeconometric policy simulation models allow for an analysis, and, above all, for a quantification of the effects different economic policies have on the various variables that represent the economy. Despite the seminal "Lucas critique" levelled against them, these models are still widely...

We investigate the impact of the European Central Bank's monetary policy announcements on the level and volatility of the EUR-US Dollar exchange rate employing an AR-FIGARCH specification. Using high-frequency data we estimate the individual and complementary effects of the release of the...

We empirically analyze convergence of European producer and consumer prices for diesel fuel and investigate the role of excise taxation. By comparing the speed of convergence of prices and taxes we find a surprisingly fast speed of convergence for consumer prices. While this can in part be...

This paper estimates forward-looking Taylor rules for the euro area. Using the asymmetries in inflation and cyclical output developments across countries, we investigate the adequacy of the single monetary policy for each of the EuropeanMonetary Union (EMU) member countries. Notable differences...

This paper investigates how households form their perceptions of consumer price inflation. Using data from the harmonized EU consumer survey, we find that inflation perceptions are inefficient and highly heterogeneous, yet contemporaneously related to the actual rate of inflation. Consequently,...

This paper analyzes the response of the European stock markets to the monetary policy shocks by the European Central Bank using the heteroskedasticity based approach of Rigobon (2003). We find that monetary policy tightening has a heterogeneous impact on the Euro Area sectors on the day the...

This paper assesses the probability method for quantifying EU consumer survey data on perceived and expected inflation. Based on household level data from the Swedish consumer survey that asks for both qualitative and quantitative responses, it is found that the theoretical assumptions of the...

Nowadays, it is widely believed that greater disclosure and clarity over policy may lead to greater predictability of central bank actions. We examine whether communication by the European Central Bank (ECB) adds information compared to the information provided by a Taylor rule model in which...

In this paper we investigate empirically, first, the characteristics of the firms that reduced their ICT investment due to the 2008 crisis, particularly the firms' ICT-related characteristics in terms of ICT budget, skills and applications used. The analysis of the ICT characteristics that may...