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Ignacio Hernando
- 14 February 2007
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 727Details
- Abstract
- This paper documents producer price setting in 6 countries of the euro area: Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Portugal. It collects evidence from available studies on each of those countries and also provides new evidence. These studies use monthly producer price data. The following five stylised facts emerge consistently across countries. First, producer prices change infrequently: each month around 21% of prices change. Second, there is substantial cross-sector heterogeneity in the frequency of price changes: prices change very often in the energy sector, less often in food and intermediate goods and least often in non-durable non-food and durable goods. Third, countries have a similar ranking of industries in terms of frequency of price changes. Fourth, there is no evidence of downward nominal rigidity: price changes are for about 45% decreases and 55% increases. Fifth, price changes are sizeable compared to the inflation rate. The paper also examines the factors driving producer price changes. It finds that costs structure, competition, seasonality, inflation and attractive pricing all play a role in driving producer price changes. In addition producer prices tend to be more flexible than consumer prices.
- JEL Code
- E31 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles→Price Level, Inflation, Deflation
D40 : Microeconomics→Market Structure and Pricing→General
C25 : Mathematical and Quantitative Methods→Single Equation Models, Single Variables→Discrete Regression and Qualitative Choice Models, Discrete Regressors, Proportions - Network
- Eurosystem inflation persistence network
- 31 October 2005
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 538Details
- Abstract
- This paper reports the results of a survey carried out by the Banco de Espa
- JEL Code
- D40 : Microeconomics→Market Structure and Pricing→General
E31 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles→Price Level, Inflation, Deflation - Network
- Eurosystem inflation persistence network
- 21 October 2005
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 535Details
- Abstract
- This study investigates the pricing behaviour of firms in the euro area on the basis of surveys conducted by nine Eurosystem national central banks, covering more than 11,000 firms. The results, robust across countries, show that firms operate in monopolistically competitive markets, where prices are mostly set following markup rules and where price discrimination is common. Around one-third of firms follow mainly time-dependent pricing rules while two thirds allow for elements of state-dependence. The majority of firms take into account past and expected economic developments in their pricing decisions. Price stickiness is mainly driven by customer relationships
- JEL Code
- E30 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles→General
D40 : Microeconomics→Market Structure and Pricing→General - Network
- Eurosystem inflation persistence network
- 14 September 2005
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 522Details
- Abstract
- This paper identifies the basic features of price setting behaviour at the producer level in the Spanish economy using a large dataset containing the micro data underlying the construction of the PPI over the period 1991-1999. It explores how these general features are affected by some specific factors (cost structure, degree of competition, demand conditions, government intervention, level of inflation, seasonality, and the practice of using attractive prices) and presents a comparison of price setting practices at the producer and at the consumer level to ascertain whether the retail sector augments or mitigates price stickiness. We find that prices do not change often but do so by a large amount. The cost structure, proxied by the labour share and the relevance of raw materials, and the degree of competition, proxied by import penetration, affect price flexibility. We also find some evidence that producer prices are more flexible than consumer prices.
- JEL Code
- E31 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles→Price Level, Inflation, Deflation
D40 : Microeconomics→Market Structure and Pricing→General - Network
- Eurosystem inflation persistence network
- 30 March 2005
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 461Details
- Abstract
- A common finding in empirical studies using micro data on consumer and producer prices is that hazard functions for price changes are decreasing. This means that a firm will have a lower probability of changing its price the longer it has kept it unchanged. This result is at odds with standard models of price setting. Here a simple explanation is proposed: decreasing hazards may result from aggregating heterogeneous price setters. We show analytically the form of this heterogeneity effect for the most commonly used pricing rules and find that the aggregate hazard is (nearly always decreasing. Results are illustrated using Spanish producer and consumer price data. We find that a very accurate representation of individual data is obtained by considering just 4 groups of agents: one group of flexible Calvo agents, one group of intermediate Calvo agents and one group of sticky Calvo agents plus an annual Calvo process.
- JEL Code
- C40 : Mathematical and Quantitative Methods→Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics→General
D40 : Microeconomics→Market Structure and Pricing→General
E30 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles→General - Network
- Eurosystem inflation persistence network
- 24 November 2004
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 416Details
- Abstract
- This paper identifies the basic features of the price setting mechanism in the Spanish economy, using a large dataset that contains over 1.1 million price records and covers around 70% of the expenditure on the CPI basket. In particular, the paper identifies differences in the frequency and size of price adjustments across types of products and explores how these general features are affected by certain specific factors: seasonality, the level of inflation, changes in indirect taxation and the practice of using psychological and round prices. We find that prices do not change often but do so by a large amount, although there is a marked heterogeneity across products. Moreover, the high frequency of price reductions suggests that there is no strong downward rigidity. Our evidence also supports the use of time and state-dependent pricing strategies.
- JEL Code
- E31 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles→Price Level, Inflation, Deflation
D40 : Microeconomics→Market Structure and Pricing→General
C25 : Mathematical and Quantitative Methods→Single Equation Models, Single Variables→Discrete Regression and Qualitative Choice Models, Discrete Regressors, Proportions - Network
- Eurosystem inflation persistence network
- 1 December 2001
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 112Details
- Abstract
- We present a comparable set of results on the monetary transmission channels on firm investment for the four largest countries of the euro area (Germany, France, Italy and Spain). With particularly rich micro datasets for each country containing over 215,000 observations from 1985 to 1999, we explore what can be learned on the interest channel and broad credit channel. For each of those countries we estimate neo-classical investment relationships, explaining investment by its user cost, sales and cash flow. We find investment to be sensitive to user cost changes in all those four countries. This implies an operative interest channel in these euro area countries. We also find investment in all those countries to be quite sensitive to cash flow movements. However we find that only in Italy smaller firms react more to cash flow movements, implying that a broad credit channel might not be as pervasive in all countries
- JEL Code
- E22 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy→Capital, Investment, Capacity
E50 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit→General - Network
- Eurosystem Monetary Transmission Network
- 1 December 2001
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 99Details
- Abstract
- This paper uses panel data on banks, for the period 1991-98, to test the existence of a bank-lending 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 changes, of bank lending by banks with different size, liquidity and capitalisation. Second, we analyse the response to an exogenous deposit-reducing shock a tax-induced shift from deposits to mutual fund shares). As this involves a pure loan supply shock, it best solves the above-mentioned identification problem. Our results are mostly against the existence of a bank-lending channel in the period under analysis. This result appears to be related to the important role of many small banks as collectors of savings, meaning they have a large volume of resources available for lending
- JEL Code
- C23 : Mathematical and Quantitative Methods→Single Equation Models, Single Variables→Panel Data Models, Spatio-temporal Models
E44 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Money and Interest Rates→Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
E52 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit→Monetary Policy
G21 : Financial Economics→Financial Institutions and Services→Banks, Depository Institutions, Micro Finance Institutions, Mortgages - Network
- Eurosystem Monetary Transmission Network