This paper argues that, under certain conditions, firms consider export activity as a substitute of serving domestic demand. Our econometric model for six euro area countries suggests domestic demand pressure and capacity constraint restrictions as additional variables of a properly specified...

This paper provides a new cross-country evaluation of competitiveness, focusing on the linkages between productivity and export performance among European economies. We use the information compiled in the Trade module of CompNet to establish new stylized facts regarding the joint distributions...

The paper analyses the impact of import penetration on firms' profitability in 15 manufacturing industries in 10 euro area countries during 1995-2004, focusing on the role of emerging market economies. Our results indicate that import competition from emerging market economies has had an overall...

We estimate the response of product-level retail prices to changes in the corporate tax rates paid by wholesale producers (pass-through). Under perfect competition in goods and factor markets, pass-through of corporate taxes should be zero, and their incidence mainly falls on factor prices. We...

What determines a country's ability to compete in international markets? What fosters the global competitiveness of its firms? And in the European context, have key elements of the EU strategy such as EMU and enlargement helped or hindered domestic firms' competitiveness in local and global...

Inflation volatility is clearly important for structural analysis, forecasting and policy purposes, yet it is often overlooked in the literature. This paper compares inflation volatility among advanced open economies with inflation targeting monetary policy frameworks. The results of the...

During economic downturns, weak domestic demand developments seem to be an additional driver of exports, as firms increase their efforts to serve markets abroad to compensate the fall in domestic sales. This may constitute an additional mechanism adjustment for the euro area countries where real...

The paper investigates the link between domestic demand pressure and exports by considering an error correction dynamic panel model for eleven euro area countries over the last two decades. The results suggest that there is a statistically significant substitution effect between domestic and...

This paper describes the main features of Global Value Chains (GVCs) in the euro area taken as a whole and compares with other large trade players like the US, China and Japan. In addition, the perspective of individual euro area countries is considered, with a focus on intra euro area linkages....

Since the mid-2000s price-competitiveness indicators for some euro-area countries have been providing conflicting signals. Against a stability of the producer price (PPI)-based measure, the manufacturing unit labour cost (ULCM)-deflated indicator points to a major competitiveness loss in Italy;...