This paper analyses the effects of a change in monetary policy on firms' investment in Germany, France, Italy and Spain using a data set which provides aggregated balance sheet and profit and loss account data for 17 different industries and 3 different size classes. The main findings are...

This paper shows that adjustment costs modelled as firing costs of moderate size go a long way in explaining the variability and counter-cyclicality of the labour share at the firm and aggregate level. Firing costs cause firms to hire less in recessions and hire less in booms causing wage costs...

This paper provides estimates of price-marginal cost ratios or markups for 50 sectors in 8 euro area countries and the US over the period 1981-2004. The estimates are obtained applying the methodology developed by Roeger (1995) on the EU KLEMS March 2007 database. Five stylized facts are...

Financial accelerator theories imply that weak balance sheets can amplify adverse shocks on firm investment. This effect should be asymmetric, stronger in downturns than in upturns and stronger for small firms than for large firms. This paper provides empirical evidence of the presence of a...

Small firms often do not change their number of employees from year to year. This paper investigates the role of adjustment costs and indivisibility of labor in the employment stickiness of manufacturing firms with less than 75 employees. When small firms have to adjust employment in units of at...

This paper investigates the effects of monetary policy on firms' investment behaviour. The analysis relies on a comprehensive database of Belgian firms covering all sectors of economic activity and firms of all sizes. We proceed in two steps. First, we estimate a reduced-form investment equation...

This paper presents original evidence on price setting in the euro area at the individual level. We use micro data on consumer (CPI) and producer (PPI) prices, as well as survey information. Our main findings are: (i) prices in the euro area are sticky and more so than in the US; (ii) there is...

This paper presents a comparable set of results on the monetary transmission channels on firm investment (the interest rate channel and the broad credit channel) for the four largest euro-areacountries (Germany, France, Italy and Spain), using particularly rich micro datasets for eachcountry...

In this paper we present comparable results on the determinants of firms' investment and their link to monetary policy. The results have been obtained by the Eurosystem Monetary Transmission Network. This network has produced a series of papers in which the use of micro data permits estimating...