Time series estimates of inflation persistence incur an upward bias if shifts in the inflation target of the central bank remain unaccounted for. Using a structural time series approach we measure different sorts of inflation persistence allowing for an unobserved timevarying inflation target....

This paper documents the patterns and determinants of price setting in the Belgian industry. We analyse the micro data underlying the Producer Price Index (PPI) over the period from February 2001 to January 2005. On average only one out of four prices changes in a typical month, whereas the...

This paper documents producer price setting in 6 countries of the euro area: Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Portugal. It collects evidence from available studies on each of those countries and also provides new evidence. These studies use monthly producer price data. The following...

We show how monetary aggregates can be usefully incorporated in forecasts of inflation. This requires fully disregarding the high-frequency fluctuations blurring the money/inflation relation, i.e., the projection of inflation onto monetary aggregates must be restricted to the low frequencies....

This paper identifies the empirical stylized features of price setting behaviour in Portugal using the micro-datasets underlying the consumer and the producer price indexes. The main conclusions are the following: 1 in every 4 prices change each month; there is a considerable degree of...

This paper proposes testable conditions that core inflation measures should satisfy. Trend inflation indicators calculated by Banco de Portugal are tested against this background. The major conclusion is that the so-called “underlying inflation”, the “10% trimmed mean”, and the “25%...

This paper documents producer price setting in 6 countries of the euro area: Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Portugal. It collects evidence from available studies on each of those countries and also provides new evidence. These studies use monthly producer price data. The following...

This paper assesses the usefulness of the commonly used underlying inflation indicator, in light of the criteria proposed in Marques et al. (2000). Empirical evidence for a group of six countries strongly suggets that the use of underlying inflation as an indicator of trend inflation should be...

This paper presents original evidence on price setting in the euro area at the individual level. We use micro data on consumer (CPI) and producer (PPI) prices, as well as survey information. Our main findings are: (i) prices in the euro area are sticky and more so than in the US; (ii) there is...

This paper investigates the consequences of non-stationarity for the principal components analysis and suggests a data transformation that allows obtaining smoother series for the first principal component to be used as a core inflation indicator. The paper also introduces a theoretical model,...