Im ersten Halbjahr 2000 setzte sich der wirtschaftliche Aufschwung fort. Das reale Bruttoinlandsprodukt dürfte um 3 3/4 % zugenommen haben, die Arbeitslosenquote im Jahresdurchschnitt auf 8,5 % gesunken sein. Die öffentlichen Haushalte waren annähernd ausgeglichen, und die Leistungsbilanz...

Die belgische Wirtschaft hat die westeuropäische Wachstumsflaute überraschend gut überstanden Das reale Bruttoinlandsprodukt expandierte 2003 um etwa 1%. Auf dem Arbeitsmarkt verschlechterte sich die Lage aber weiterhin, und die Arbeitslosenrate stieg im Jahresdurchschnitt auf 8¼% an. Die...

Keynesian economics dominated economic thought and macroeconomic policy-making in the 1950s and 1960s. However, the diffusion of Keynesian economics has been uneven. In this paper, we compare the spread of Keynesian economics in two continental European countries: Belgium and Italy. We focus on...

How strong are strategic complementarities in price setting across firms? In this paper, we provide a direct empirical estimate of firms' price responses to changes in prices of their competitors. We develop a general framework and an empirical identification strategy to estimate the...

This paper reports the results of an ad hoc survey on price-setting behaviour conducted in February 2004 among 2,000 Belgian firms. The reported results clearly deviate from a situation of perfect competition and show that firms have some market power. Pricing-to-market is applied by a majority...

Using Logistic Normal regressions, we model the price-setting behaviour for a large sample of Belgian consumer prices over the January 1989 - January 2001 period. Our results indicate that time-dependent features are very important, particularly an infinite mixture of Calvo pricing rules and...

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...

We test whether firms with a single bank are better shielded from loss of credit and investment cuts in periods of adverse cash flow shocks than firms with multiple bank relationships. Our estimates of the cash flow sensitivity of investment show that both types of firms are equally subject to...

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...