Based on individual price records collected for the computation of the Austrian CPI, average frequencies of price changes and durations of price spells are estimated to characterize price setting in Austria. Depending on the estimation method, prices are unchanged for 10 to 14 months on average....

This paper documents patterns of price setting at the retail level in the euro area, summarized in six stylized facts. First, the average euro area monthly frequency of price adjustment is 15 p.c., compared to about 25 p.c. in the US. Second, the frequency of price changes is characterized by...

We provide a methodology to disentangle the long-run relation between variables from their own dynamics. Macroeconomic and aggregate financial series have a high degree of inertia. If this persistence is not properly accounted for, spurious correlations will give rise to paradoxes. Our procedure...

This paper analyses some fiscal aspects of mortgage debt in the EU. It first describes the main fiscal instruments that governments use to affect mortgage-financed home-ownership. In the empirical part, real mortgage debt growth is analysed for 15 EU countries using pooled regressions. Fiscal...

This paper derives indicators of the severity and structure of banking system risk from asymptotic interdependencies between banks’ equity prices. We use new tools available from multivariate extreme value theory to estimate individual banks’ exposure to each other (“contagion risk”) and...

The paper analyses whether communication and actual interventions in FX markets are successful in moving exchange rates over the medium- to long-run. It compares empirical evidence based on time-series analysis with that obtained from an eventstudy approach. Both the time-series approach based...

By employing Lucas’ (1982) model, this study proposes an arbitrage relationship – the Uncovered Equity Return Parity (URP) condition – to explain the dynamics of exchange rates. When expected equity returns in a country/region are lower than expected equity returns in another...

This paper examines the cross-dynamics of volatility term structures implied by foreign exchange options. The data used in the empirical analysis consist of daily observations of implied volatilities for OTC options on the euro, Japanese yen, British pound, Swiss franc, and Canadian dollar,...

This paper examines exchange rate pass-through in the euro area by accounting for the impact of exchange rate changes on exporting firms’ market power, cost structure and competitiveness. An international oligopoly model where exporting firms simultaneously decide on their pricing and...

The aim of this paper is to improve our understanding of the key determinants of intra- and extra-euro area imports. Using a simultaneous equation estimation framework, and pooling the data across nine euro area countries as an approximation of the euro area, we estimate intra- and extra-euro...