This paper derives stylised facts on sectoral inflation dynamics and confronts these facts with two popular theoretical models of price setting. Based on sectoral price responses to macroeconomic shocks estimated from an approximate factor model, we find that the frequency of price changes...

This paper estimates the response of consumer prices to a monetary policy shock in Switzerland. We find that there is no evidence of a price puzzle at the aggregate level. This is because our factor-augmented vector autoregression (FAVAR) avoids misspecification by including more information...

This paper reports on the 2009 update of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) research project, covering 212 countries and territories and measuring six dimensions of governance between 1996 and 2008: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism,...

This paper reports on the latest update of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) research project, covering 212 countries and territories and measuring six dimensions of governance between 1996 and 2007: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism,...

When seeking a public service, users may be required to pay in bribes more than the official price. Consequently, some users may be discouraged and choose not to seek a service due to the higher price imposed by the bribery "tax." This paper explores the price and quantity components of the...