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Ludmila Fadejeva
- 17 July 2023
- OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES - No. 324Details
- Abstract
- The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic caused a deep recession globally, as well as in the euro area, accompanied by a steep decline in inflation rates in 2020. This paper reviews some of the main challenges created by the pandemic for inflation measurement and provides micro price data analysis of how price setting has reacted to the strong COVID-19 shock. For this purpose, we use three different, but complementary, microdata sources for specific countries and sectors: micro price data underlying the official consumer price indices in Germany, Italy, Latvia and Slovakia; (scanner) data from German and Italian supermarkets; and online (web-scraped) prices for Poland. A common finding of the micro price studies in this paper is that state dependence significantly contributed to the price-setting response to the COVID-19 shock. Nevertheless, the extent and degree of responses varies widely by sector and even country, also depending on the severity of the pandemic situation.
- JEL Code
- D4 : Microeconomics→Market Structure and Pricing
E31 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles→Price Level, Inflation, Deflation
- 17 July 2023
- OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES - No. 319Details
- Abstract
- This paper documents five stylised facts relating to price adjustment in the euro area, using various micro price datasets collected in a period with relatively low and stable inflation. First, price changes are infrequent in the core sectors. On average, 12% of consumer prices change each month, falling to 8.5% when sales prices are excluded. The frequency of producer price adjustment is greater (25%), reflecting that the prices of intermediate goods and energy are more flexible. For both consumer and producer prices, cross-sectoral heterogeneity is more pronounced than cross-country heterogeneity. Second, price changes tend to be large and heterogeneous. For consumer prices, the typical absolute price change is about 10%, and the distribution of price changes shows a broad dispersion. For producer prices, the typical absolute price change is smaller, but nevertheless larger than inflation. Third, price setting is mildly state-dependent: the probability of price adjustment rises with the size of price misalignment, mainly reflecting idiosyncratic shocks, but it does not increase very sharply. Fourth, for both consumer and producer prices, the repricing rate showed no trend in the period 2005-19 but was more volatile in the short run. Fifth, small cyclical variations in frequency did not contribute much to fluctuations in aggregate inflation, which instead mainly reflected shifts in the average size of price changes. Consistent with idiosyncratic shocks as the main driver of price changes, aggregate disturbances affected inflation by shifting the relative number of firms increasing or decreasing their prices, rather than the size of price increases and decreases.
- JEL Code
- E3 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles
E5 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit
- 17 June 2022
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 2669Details
- Abstract
- Using CPI micro data for 11 euro area countries covering about 60% of the euro area consumption basket over the period 2010-2019, we document new findings on consumer price rigidity in the euro area: (i) each month on average 12.3% of prices change, which compares with 19.3% in the United States; when we exclude price changes due to sales, however, the proportion of prices adjusted each month is 8.5% in the euro area versus 10% in the United States; (ii) differences in price rigidity are rather limited across euro area countries but much larger across sectors; (iii) the median price increase (resp. decrease) is 9.6% (13%) when including sales and 6.7% (8.7%) when excluding sales; cross-country heterogeneity is more pronounced for the size than for the frequency of price changes; (iv) the distribution of price changes is highly dispersed: 14% of price changes in absolute values are lower than 2% whereas 10% are above 20%; (v) the overall frequency of price changes does not change much with inflation and does not react much to aggregate shocks; (vi) changes in inflation are mostly driven by movements in the overall size; when decomposing the overall size, changes in the share of price increases among all changes matter more than movements in the size of price increases or the size of price decreases. These findings are consistent with the predictions of a menu cost model in a low inflation environment where idiosyncratic shocks are a more relevant driver of price adjustment than aggregate shocks.
- JEL Code
- D40 : Microeconomics→Market Structure and Pricing→General
E31 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles→Price Level, Inflation, Deflation - Network
- Price-setting Microdata Analysis Network (PRISMA)
- 15 June 2018
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 2158Details
- Abstract
- This paper provides evidence on the role of non-base wage components as a channel for firms to adjust labour costs in the event of adverse shocks. It uses data from a firm-level survey for 25 European countries that covers the period 2010–2013. We find that firms subject to nominal wage rigidities, which prevent them from adjusting base wages, are more likely to cut non-base wage components in order to adjust labour costs when needed. Firms thus use non-base wage components as a buffer to overcome base wage rigidity. We further show that while nonbase wage components exhibit some degree of downward rigidity, they do so to a lesser extent than base wages.
- JEL Code
- J30 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs→General
J32 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs→Nonwage Labor Costs and Benefits, Retirement Plans, Private Pensions
C81 : Mathematical and Quantitative Methods→Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology, Computer Programs→Methodology for Collecting, Estimating, and Organizing Microeconomic Data, Data Access
P5 : Economic Systems→Comparative Economic Systems - Network
- Wage dynamics network
- 31 January 2018
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 2124Details
- Abstract
- More than five years after the start of the Sovereign debt crisis in Europe, its impact on labour market outcomes is not clear. This paper aims to fill this gap. We use qualitative firm-level data for 24 European countries, collected within the Wage Dynamics Network (WDN) of the ESCB. We first derive a set of indices measuring difficulties in accessing the credit market for the period 2010-13. Second, we provide a description of the relationship between credit difficulties and changes in labour input both along the extensive and the intensive margins as well as on wages. We find strong and significant correlation between credit difficulties and adjustments along both the extensive and the intensive margin. In the presence of credit market difficulties, firms cut wages by reducing the variable part of wages. This evidence suggests that credit shocks can affect not only the real economy, but also nominal variables.
- JEL Code
- D53 : Microeconomics→General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium→Financial Markets
E24 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy→Employment, Unemployment, Wages, Intergenerational Income Distribution, Aggregate Human Capital
E44 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Money and Interest Rates→Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
G31 : Financial Economics→Corporate Finance and Governance→Capital Budgeting, Fixed Investment and Inventory Studies, Capacity
G32 : Financial Economics→Corporate Finance and Governance→Financing Policy, Financial Risk and Risk Management, Capital and Ownership Structure, Value of Firms, Goodwill - Network
- Wage dynamics network
- 10 January 2018
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 2122Details
- Abstract
- We study the transmission channels for rises in the minimum wage using a unique firm-level dataset from eight Central and Eastern European countries. Representative samples of firms in each country were asked to evaluate the relevance of a wide range of adjustment channels following specific instances of rises in the minimum wage during the recent post-crisis period. The paper adds to the rest of literature by presenting the reactions of firms as a combination of strategies, and evaluates the relative importance of those strategies. Our findings suggest that the most popular adjustment channels are cuts in non-labour costs, rises in product prices, and improvements in productivity. Cuts in employment are less popular and occur mostly through reduced hiring rather than direct layoffs. Our study also provides evidence of potential spillover effects that rises in the minimum wage can have on firms without minimum wage workers.
- JEL Code
- D22 : Microeconomics→Production and Organizations→Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
E23 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy→Production
J31 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs→Wage Level and Structure, Wage Differentials - Network
- Wage dynamics network