This paper investigates the effects of monetary policy on firms' investment behaviour. The analysis relies on a comprehensive database of Belgian firms covering all sectors of economic activity and firms of all sizes. We proceed in two steps. First, we estimate a reduced-form investment equation...

This book provides coherent theoretical and empirical analysis of firms’ investment and financing decisions. It assesses the role of uncertainty, financial imperfections, corporate governance and taxation. Evidence is obtained using several unique and high quality microeconomic data-sets,...

We investigate the effect of demand and price uncertainty on firms' planned and realized investment from a panel of manufacturing firms. Uncertainty measures are derived from firms' own expectations about demand and prices and firm's sales. We find that demand uncertainty at the time of planning...

This paper investigates the effects of monetary policy on firms' investment behaviour through the interest rate and credit channels. The analysis relies on a comprehensive database of Belgian firms covering all sectors of economic activity and firms of all sizes. We proceed in two steps. First,...

We test whether firms with a single bank are better shielded from loss of credit and investment cuts in periods of adverse cash flow shocks than firms with multiple bank relationships. Our estimates of the cash flow sensitivity of investment show that both types of firms are equally subject to...

Policy-making institutions such as the European Commission, the ECB and the OECD often use unit labor costs as a measure of international competitiveness. The goal of this paper is to examine how well this measure is related to international export performance at the firm level. To this end, we...

We provide evidence on the effect of elementary index choice on inflation measurement. Using scanner data for 15844 individual items from 42 product categories and 10 euro area countries, we compute product category level elementary price indexes using nine different elementary index formulas....

The US Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) and the Eurosystem’s Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) provide evidence that wealth is heavily concentrated at the upper tail of the wealth distribution. A commonly cited number for the US is that 1 percent of the households hold 30...