This paper analyses the link between finance and growth by studying the effect that the process of financial deregulation and harmonisation of banking laws at the EU level has brought about on growth over the last 40 years. Our main findings point to the existence of a positive long-run growth...

This paper analyzes the welfare implications of creating a Single Euro Payments Area. We study the effects of increased network compatibility and payment scale economies on consumer and merchant card fees and its impact on card usage. In particular, we model competition among debit cards and...

We study the effect of government encouraged or mandated interchange fee ceilings on consumer and merchant adoption and usage of payment cards in an economy where card acceptance is far from complete. We believe that we are the first to use bank-level data to study the impact of interchange fee...

Two seemingly unconnected empirical results suggest an intriguing mechanism. First, economic integration helps harmonize prices internationally, with trade being the primary channel (Rogoff 1996, Goldberg and Knetter 1997). Second, monetary union may greatly increase the amount of trade among...

This paper discusses a wide range of indicators of the degree of integration of the euro area banking system. It is concerned with volume data, a less developed field of research compared with studies on prices/rates. We first set out a methodological framework, a mixture of elementary and more...

This paper examines the degree of price rigidity in Belgian consumer prices, using a large database. As to the observed degree of rigidity, the results reveal a substantial amount of heterogeneity, not only across but also within product categories. While prices turn out to be perfectly flexible...

This study examines price setting behaviour of Italian firms on the basis of the results of a survey conducted by Banca du0092Italia in early 2003 on a sample of around 350 firms belonging to all economic sectors. Prices are mostly fixed following standard mark-up rules, although...

This paper identifies the basic features of the price setting mechanism in the Spanish economy, using a large dataset that contains over 1.1 million price records and covers around 70% of the expenditure on the CPI basket. In particular, the paper identifies differences in the frequency and size...

This paper reports the results of a survey conducted by the Banque de France during Winter 2003-2004 to investigate the price-setting behavior of French manufacturing companies. Prices are found to adjust infrequently; the median firm modifies its price only once a year. Price reviews are more...

This paper uses a model of import prices whereby exporters to the euro area set export prices partly as a mark-up on their production costs (i.e., the degree of exchange rate pass-through) and partly in line with euro area producer prices (i.e., pricing-to-market). Using both time series and...