This paper examines Norwegian gasoline pump prices using daily station-specific observations from March 2003 to March 2006. Whereas studies that have analyzed similar price cycles in other countries find support for the Edgeworth cycle theory (Maskin and Tirole, 1988), we demonstrate that...

This Paper tests the presence of multiple independent submarkets in the Italian motor insurance industry. Independence is motivated by administrative boundaries among provinces and by further locational reasons. We find that the independence effects are sufficient to induce a minimum degree of...

The paper provides an empirical analysis of inflation persistence in one of inflation targeting countries, the Czech Republic, using 412 detailed product-level consumer price indexes underlying the consumer basket over the period from 1994 to 2005. Subject to various sensitivity tests, our...

The paper provides an empirical analysis of price setting behaviour in Slovakia, using large micro-level dataset covering about 57% of Slovak CPI for the period 1997-2001. The novelty of the paper is the analysis of a country characterized by nearly double-digit inflation and undergoing massive...

Firms’ decisions about which goods to produce are often made at a more disaggregate level than the data observed by empirical researchers. When products differ according to production technique or the way in which they enter demand, this data aggregation problem introduces a bias into standard...

We study Austrian job reallocation in the period of 1978–98, using a large administrative dataset where we correct for ‘spurious’ entries and exits of firms. We find that on average nine out of 100 randomly selected jobs were created within the last year, and that about nine out of...

This paper examines hierarchies’ role in the organization of human-capital-intensive production. We develop an equilibrium model of hierarchical organization, then provide empirical evidence using confidential data on thousands of law offices from the 1992 Census of Services. We show how the...

In the large literature on firm performance, economists have given little attention to entrepreneurs. We use deaths of more than 500 entrepreneurs as a source of exogenous variation, and ask whether this variation can explain shifts in firm performance. Using longitudinal data, we find large and...

This paper studies the extensive and intensive margins of firms' global sourcing decisions. We develop a quantifiable multi-country sourcing model in which heterogeneous firms self-select into importing based on their productivity and country-specific variables. The model delivers a simple...

This Paper develops a model of endogenous product selection by firms. The theory is motivated by new evidence we present on the importance of product switching by US manufacturers. Two-thirds of continuing firms change their product mix every five years, and product switches involve more than...