We examine the degree of market power in the big four countries of the euro area using macro and firm-micro data. We focus on three main indicators of market power in and across countries: namely, the concentration ratios, the markup and the degree of economic dynamism. For the macro database we...

Price inflation in the euro area has been stable and low since the Global Financial Crisis, despite notable changes in output and unemployment. We show that an increasing share of high markup firms is part of the explanation of why inflation remained stubbornly stable and low in the euro area...

Using microdata from the second wave of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey, we investigate the accuracy of property values estimated by homeowners - so called "self-assessed" house prices - and explore the drivers of possible deviations of these prices from official hedonic house price...

This paper assesses the relative importance of perceived obstacles to hiring workers on a permanent basis faced by EU firms and studies how they depend on firm's characteristics. Findings suggest that the main obstacles to hiring in Europe are high uncertainty, shortage of skilled labour, high...

This paper focuses on the euro area wage structure and its potential determinants from a sectoral viewpoint. Merging information from the OECD Structural Analysis database with data from the EU Labour Force Survey, we construct a cross-country panel of 22 industries in 8 euro area countries for...

Macroeconomic studies suggest that employment-output elasticities in the euro area increased during the recovery from the crisis, especially in those countries that implemented reforms. In this paper, we use micro (individual-level) data from the Eurostat Labour Force Survey to investigate...

We study the composition of bank loan portfolios during the transition of the real sec-tor to a knowledge economy where firms increasingly use intangible capital. Exploiting heterogeneity in bank exposure to the compositional shift from tangible to intangible capital, we show that exposed banks...

We contrast how monetary policy affects intangible relative to tangible investment. We document that the stock prices of firms with more intangible assets react less to monetary policy shocks, as identified from Fed Funds futures movements around FOMC announcements. Consistent with the stock...

This paper investigates the in inflationary effects of fscal policy in an optimizing general equilibrium monetary model with capital accumulation, exible prices and wealth effects. The model is calibrated to Euro Area quarterly data. Simulation results show that government defcits, high debt...