The four papers in this issue are part of a collective effort coordinated by the ECB and European National Central Banks, the Eurosystem's Wage Dynamics Network Survey. They provide new and systematic evidence on wage and price flexibility in Europe and attempt to explain their determinants.

This paper shows that specialized education reduces workers' mobility and hence their ability to cope with economic changes. We illustrate this point using labor force data from two countries having experienced important macroeconomic turbulence; a large economy with rigid labor markets, Poland,...