In this paper we compare production inefficiencies in bilateral meetings generated by two types of trading frictions: double-coincidence frictions and information frictions. For both types of frictions, money enlarges the sets of incentive-feasible allocations relative to barter. In environments...

Stock returns in emerging markets are to some extent predictable on the basis of selected instrument variables. We show that local information is more important than global information to capture emerging stock market returns. This is an indication for at least partial segmentation of emerging...

The Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) is the single most important indicator of inflation used by the European Central Bank. Sections 2 to 4 of the paper look at the theory of inflation indexes that could be used as target indexes of inflation. A Consumer Price Index (CPI) emerges as...

A short overview of the organisation of research in the Eurosystem and in the ECB is provided in the paper together with some preliminary, tentative evidence on the research output. Given that the ECB was created only on 1 June 1998, and the lags associated with publication in journals, the...