In this paper we use the frequency domain Granger causality test of Breitung/Candelon (2006) to analyse short- and long-run causality between energy prices and prices of food commodities. We find that the oil price Granger causes all the considered food prices. However, when controlling for...

The current economic policy discussion on financial integration in the European Union concentrates on cross-border mergers. We study the impact of cross-border lending in a theoretical model where banks acquire either hard or soft information on borrowing firms and predict that the closer firms...

The financial integration in Europe concentrates on cross-border mergers rather than cross-border lending and emphasizes the need for harmonizing bank regulation and supervision. We study the impact of cross-border lending in a theoretical model where banks acquire either hard or soft...

The ifo Institute is Germany’s largest business survey provider, with the ifo Business Climate Germany as one of the most important leading indicators for gross domestic product. However, the ifo Business Survey is not solely limited to the Business Climate and also delivers a multitude of...

In this article, we study how the economic environment for firms in the service sector affects their price adjustments by using a novel dataset from the Services Survey of the Brazilian Institute of Economics from the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV). The set of variables from the survey includes...

Modern systems of official statistics require the estimation and publication of business statistics for disaggregated domains, for example, industry domains and geographical regions. Outlier robust methods have proven to be useful for small area estimation. Recently proposed outlier robust...

The Ifo Institute for Economic Research has been conducting regular business surveyssince its foundation in 1949. The most well-known of Ifo's surveys is the Ifo BusinessSurvey (ifo Konjunkturtest). The micro data of the Ifo Business Survey are accessible toexternal researchers on-site at Ifo as...

Economic forecasts are an important element of rational economic policy both on the federal and on the local or regional level. Solid budgetary plans for government expenditures and revenues rely on efficient macroeconomic projections. However, official data on quarterly regional GDP in Germany...

In order to bridge temporary delays in the dissemination of official foreign trade statistics compiled by the National Board of Customs after the Finland's entry into the EU in 1995, the Bank of Finland decided to introduce a special survey on Finnish foreign trade in merchandise.It was felt...