Does time-varying business volatility affect the price setting of firms and thus the transmission of monetary policy into the real economy? To address this question, we estimate from the firm-level micro data of the German IFO Business Climate Survey the impact of idiosyncratic volatility on the...

This paper investigates the existence of significant spillovers from the housing sector onto the wider economy for the seven major OECD countries using Uhlig's (2005) agnostic identification procedure. This method allows a housing demand shock to be identified in a six-variable VAR model by...

This paper assesses the OECD’s projections for GDP growth and inflation during the global financial crisis and recovery, focussing on lessons that can be learned. The projections repeatedly over-estimated growth, failing to anticipate the extent of the slowdown and later the weak pace of the...

This paper details the rationale and methodology behind the construction of the Persistent and Common Component of Inflation (PCCI), a measure of underlying inflation in the euro area. The PCCI reflects the view that underlying inflation captures widespread developments across the Harmonised...

A statistically significant relationship between the unemployment gap and inflation can be found for a clear majority of OECD countries, but the magnitude of the effect is typically weak. A corollary is that the effect of labour market slack on inflation can often be dominated by other shocks,...

Inflation has become much less sensitive to movements in unemployment in recent decades. A common explanation for this change is that inflation expectations have become better anchored as a consequence of credible inflation targeting by central banks. In order to evaluate this hypothesis, the...

This paper sets out a framework to estimate quality-adjusted price levels and price changes for fixed broadband services in OECD countries. We extend and adapt existing hedonic frameworks for international and interarea comparisons and consider the extended country product dummy approach....

This report updates and extends earlier assessments of quantitative inflation perceptions and expectations of consumers in the euro area and the EU using an anonymised micro data set collected by the European Commission in the context of the Harmonised EU Programme of Business and Consumer...

The preparations for the introduction of the euro in 1999 involved the need for a new set of statistics for the euro area. Since then, significant progress has been made with regard to the coverage, timeliness and accuracy of these statistics. The reliability of the first releases - i.e. their...

This study presents some stylised facts on wage growth differentials across the euro area countries in the years before and in the first eight years after the introduction of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in 1999. The study shows that wage growth dispersion, i.e. the degree of difference in...