The paper analyses the reasons for departures from strong rationality of German business cycle forecasts based on annual observations from 1963 to 2004. We rely on forecasts from the joint forecast of the so-called "six leading" forecasting institutions in Germany. We test for a non-linear...

We analyze cross-household inflation dispersion in Europe using “fictitious” monthly inflation rates for several household categories (grouped according to income levels, household size, socio-economic status, age) for the period from 1997 to 2008. Our analysis is carried out on a panel of...

We compare the formation of quantitative inflation perceptions and expectations from questions asked either in terms of price changes or in terms of the inflation rate in a new socio-economic household survey established at the University of Hamburg. In addition to socio-demographic...

We analyze cross-household inflation dispersion in Europe using "fictitious" monthly inflation rates for several household categories (grouped according to income levels, household size, socio-economic status, age) for the period from 1997 to 2008. Our analysis is carried out on a panel of 23 up...

Building on the hypotheses of loss aversion with respect to price increases and availability of frequently bought goods, Brachinger (2006, 2008) constructs an alternative index of perceived inflation (IPI), which can reproduce the jump in the measure for perceived inflation after the Euro...

Building on Prospect Theory, we apply the concept of loss aversion to the formation of inflation perceptions and test empirically for non-linearities in the inflation-perceptions relation for a panel of 10 Euro area countries. Specifically, under the assumption of loss aversion, inflation...

Using a modified version of the model presented by Belke and Gros (2007), we analyze the stability of adjustment in a currency union. Using econometric estimates for parameter values we check the stability conditions for the 11 original EMU countries and Greece. We found significant instability...

Inflation differentials in the Euro area are mainly due to a sustained divergence of wage developments across the Euro area, and narrower differences in labour productivity growth (Alvarez et al., 2006). We investigate convergence of inflation using unit labour cost (ULC) growth and applying...

We investigate the relevance of the Carroll's sticky information model of inflation expectations for four major European economies (France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom). Using survey data on household and expert inflation expectations we argue that the model adequately captures the...