This paper examines whether ownership and increased competitive pressure affect food retailers' market power, analysing whether all actors involved in the food supply chain deviate from the pricing behaviour that exists under perfect competition. A method proposed by Roeger (1995) is used to...

We find evidence that a significant part of the surge in the spreads of the PIGS countries in the Eurozone during 2010-11 was disconnected from underlying increases in the debt to Gdp ratios, and was the result of negative market sentiments that became very strong since the end of 2010. We also...

In den vergangenen Monaten haben sich die Frühindikatoren deutlich verbessert. Die konjunkturelle Dynamik dürfte in der ersten Jahreshälfte deutlich höher gewesen sein, als von uns im vergangenen März geschätzt wurde. Für das Jahr 2010 insgesamt prognostizieren wir einen Anstieg des...

Nach dem Einbruch im Winterhalbjahr 2008/09 stabilisierte sich die Produktion im Euroraum im weiteren Verlauf des Jahres 2009. Trotz der weiterhin expansiv ausgerichteten Geldpolitik zeichnet sich im Prognosezeitraum aber nur eine schwache Belebung ab. Die Wirtschaft wird von den Folgen von...

In this paper we test whether the co-movement of sovereign CDS premia increased significantly after the Greek debt crisis started in October 2009. We perform a bivariate test for contagion that is based on an approach proposed by Forbes and Rigobon (2002). Our sample consists of daily data...

This background paper describes in detail the assumptions and calculations behind the results presented in Zsolt Darvas, Jean Pisani-Ferry and André Sapir 'A comprehensive approach to the euro-area debt crisis', Bruegel Policy Brief No 2011/02, February 2011. An assessment of the results and...

This paper investigates the relationship between indicators for the intensity of use of ICT (examining three different types of ICT widely used in firms: internal, e-sales, e-procurement IS), several forms of workplace organization, and human capital on one hand, and several measures of...

Numerous studies have evaluated the effect of nutrition early in life on health much later in life by comparing individuals born during a famine to others. Nutritional intake is typically unobserved and endogenous, whereas famines arguably provide exogenous variation in the provision of...