In most OECD countries, we cannot reject up to three breaks in the mean of inflation: one break in the late 1960’s-early 1970’s, one in the early-mid 1980’s and another break in the early 1990’s. These breaks tend to be associated more often to breaks in the mean of nominal variables...

This paper uses disaggregated CPI time series to show that a break in the mean of French inflation occurred in the mid-eighties and that the 1983 monetary policy shift mostly accounted for it. CPI average yearly growth declined from nearly 11% before the break date (May 1985) to 2.1% after. No...

Based on individual price records collected for the computation of the Austrian CPI, average frequencies of price changes and durations of price spells are estimated to characterize price setting in Austria. Depending on the estimation method, prices are unchanged for 10 to 14 months on average....

We ask why, in many circumstances and many environments, decision-makers choose to act on a time-regular basis (e.g. adjust every six weeks) or on a stateregular basis (e.g. set prices ending in a 9), even though such an approach appears suboptimal. The paper attributes regular behaviour to...

We provide empirical evidence on the degree and characteristics of price rigidity in Austria by estimating the average frequency of price changes and the duration of price spells from a large data set of individual price records collected for the computation of the Austrian CPI.

The extent to which exchange rate fluctuations are passed through to domestic prices is of high relevance for open economies and for monetary authorities targeting price stability. Existing empirical studies estimating the exchange rate pass-through for Switzerland are based on either single...

A model is considered in which optimal search intensity is a result of a trade off between short run losses due to higher search costs (more interviews, commuting...) and long-run gains due to a higher chance of finding a job. We show that this optimal search intensity is higher in areas...

This paper presents a simple model of state-dependent pricing that allows identifying the relative importance of both nominal and real factors in price rigidity. Using two rich datasets consisting of a large fraction of the price quotes used to compute the Belgian and French Consumer Price...