In spite of the conspicuous use of the Internet as a delivery channel, there is a relative dearth of empirical studies that provide a quantitative analysis of the impact of the Internet on banks´ financial performance. This paper attempts to fill this gap by identifying and estimating the...

This study investigates the pricing behaviour of firms in the euro area on the basis of surveys conducted by nine Eurosystem national central banks. Overall, more than 11,000 firms participated in the survey. The results are very robust across countries. Firms operate in monopolistically...

Taking into account two salient Spanish stylized facts, namely, a persistent disinflationary process and hysteresis in the unemployment, this paper tries to answer the following question: Is a nominal permanent disinflation compatible with short-run unemployment costs but also with long-run...

This paper reports the results of a survey carried out by the Banco de España on a sample of around 2000 Spanish firms to deepen the understanding of firms' price setting behaviour. The main findings may be summarised as follows. Most Spanish firms are price setters that use predominantly state...

This paper explores the role of a number of factors in explaining the heterogeneity in the degree of price stickiness across industries, on the basis of the information provided by surveys on pricing behavior conducted in nine euro area countries. The main focus is placed on the influence of...

Using information of the balance sheets of Spanish banks between 1995 and 2009, we estimate the average impact of current and anticipated changes in banks’ capital on firm lending. We isolate the role of credit supply factors using the variation in capital growth associated to the...

This paper analyses the impact of alternative measures of firms' financial health on their investment and employment decisions. The emphasis is on the analysis of disaggregated data on such financial indicators. For this purpose, itemised data from a sample of the non-financial firms reporting...

We estimate models of labour demand for a panel of 3,400 Spanish manufacturing firms over the period 1985-2001. We examine the roles of flexible labour through temporary contracts, financial factors and a policy reform in 1997 affecting permanent contracts by lowering payroll taxes and dismissal...

The worldwide availability of easy external financing has been an essential driver of recent M&A activity and a growing perception exists that such conditions may have resulted in a large number of non-value increasing transactions. This paper evaluates the interaction between credit conditions,...

This paper uses panel data on banks, for the period 1991-98, to test the existence of a banklending channel in the Spanish economy. In order to distinguish between loan demand and supply movements, several exercises are performed. First, we analyse the differential responses, to monetary policy...