This introductory essay briefly summarizes the eleven empirical studies of price setting and price adjustment that are included in this special issue. The studies, which use data from several European countries, were conducted as part of the European Central Bank's Inflation Persistence Network.

Dieser Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit der zahlungsorientierten Gestaltung von Werkverträgen. Zunächst werden die rechtlichen Rahmenbedingungen dargestellt. Dann werden Alternativen zur Definition des Preises diskutiert und verschiedene Zahlungsmodalitäten untersucht. Mehrere Fallstudien aus...

The multiple-choice nested knapsack problem (MCKP) is a generalization of the ordinary knapsack problem, where the set of items is partitioned into classes. The binary choice of selecting an item is replaced by taking exactly one item out of each class of items. Due to the fact that the MCKP is...

The generalized assignment problem (GAP) examines the maximum profit assignment of jobs to processors such that each job is assigned to precisely one processor subject to capacity restrictions on the processors. Due to the fact that the GAP is an NP-hard integer program dual prices are not...

Angesichts der Vervielfachung der Verkehrsleistung und des Individualverkehrs sowie der damit verbundenen Städtebau- und Umweltprobleme kommt immer wieder der Vorschlag einer Korrektur des modal split zugunsten des ÖPNV auf, und zwar insbesondere bezüglich der Berufs- und Ausbildungsverkehre....

Der Zins-Pass-Through, also die Geschwindigkeit, mit der Geschäftsbanken einen Geldmarktimpuls an ihre Kunden weitergeben, ist aus zwei Gründen wirtschaftspolitisch relevant. Zum einen ist er eine wichtige Determinante für die Wirksamkeit der Geldpolitik, da er die erste Stufe der...

This paper uses a unique sample of 175 Spanish equity offerings from 1985 to 2002 to test who benefits from IPO underpricing and why. Institutions receive nearly 75% of the profits in underpriced issues, while they have to bear only 56% of the losses in overpriced offerings. Superior information...

This paper reports the results of an ad hoc survey on price-setting behaviour conducted in February 2004 among 2,000 Belgian firms. The reported results clearly deviate from a situation of perfect competition and show that firms have some market power. Pricing-to-market is applied by a majority...

In this paper we explore the link between the intensity of product market competition and inflation rates across EU countries and sectors. We consider long-term averages of inflation rates in order to remove the cyclical behavior of inflation over time and as alternative proxies of competition...

This paper explores the price-setting behavior of Austrian firms based on survey evidence. Our main result is that customer relationships are a major source of price stickiness in the Austrian economy. We also find that the majority of firms in our sample follows a timedependent pricing...