Ein Grund für die anhaltende Eurokrise sind die unterschiedliche Entwicklung der durchschnittlichen Lohnkosten pro Outputeinheit und ihre Auswirkung auf die internationale Wettbewerbsfähigkeit. Der Beitrag betrachtet die unterschiedliche Entwicklung der Lohnstückkosten der letzten 20 Jahre in...

This paper analyzes competitiveness in the Baltics in the run-up to European Union accession. Several factors appear to have driven movements in equilibrium real exchange rates in the Baltics since the start of the transition process. In the earlier years of transition, price liberalization,...

In an international hierarchy of labour costs, Austria currently ranks 9th and is thus well within the EU average. Labour is most expensive in Norway, where one hour of work is paid 34 percent higher than in Austria, followed by Denmark (+29 percent), Germany (+26 percent) and Switzerland (+24...

The unit labour cost position of Austrian businesses improved clearly in the second half of the 1990s and has remained largely stable since the year 2000. In Austrian manufacturing, one hour of blue-collar labour cost 20.80 € in 2004, hence approximately 2.25 percent less than the average paid...

Im et al. (Unpublished working paper, <CitationRef CitationID="CR11">2008</CitationRef>) develop cointegration tests using stationary instrumental variables. Their tests avoid the need to simulate critical values for the cointegration estimations, especially problematic in the presence of a nuisance parameter. Likewise, bootstrapping...</citationref>

A unique panel of retail prices spanning 123 cities in 79 countries from 1990 to 2005 is used to uncover the novel properties of long-run international price dispersion. At the PPP level, almost all of price dispersion is attributed to unskilled wage dispersion. At the level of individual goods...

We use consumer price data for 81 European cities (in Germany, Austria, Finland, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Switzerland) to study the impact of the introduction of the euro on goods market integration. Employing both aggregated and disaggregated consumer price index (CPI) data we confirm...

Despite its robust economic fundamentals relative to other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Singapore did not escape from the Asian Crisis that spread through Asia-Pacific and engulfed the global economy. First, this study uses two approaches to calculate real...

In this study, we employ that panel unit root tests can be arranged in groups by cross-section dependence or independence, heterogeneous or homogenous unit roots to examine the validity of the purchasing power parity (PPP) hypothesis in Turkey, among trading partners. Using monthly observations...

This paper examines the external sustainability and competitiveness of Benin’s economy. Balance of payments flows suggest Benin’s external position is sustainable. Large trade and current account deficits are comfortably financed by inflows through the capital and financial...