Suchergebnisse

This paper analyses price differences of McDonald's products in four different countries. I show that pricing at pricing points in different currencies may contribute to explaining deviations from the law of one price. Observing strictly equal prices is more probable if prices are set at psychological and fractional pricing points in a common currency. The latter is also found to reduce the size of price deviations. Additionally, price differences increase as transaction costs increase. Based on this data set there is no evidence that the euro has reduced price deviations.

Empirical evidence suggests that most firms operate in imperfectly competitivemarkets. We develop a search-matching model between wholesalers and retailers. Firms face search costs and form long-term relationships. Price bargain results in both wholesaler and retailer markups, depending on firms' relative bargaining power. We simulate the model to explore the role of product market search frictions in business cycles. We show that the way search costs are modelled is crucial to provide a realistic picture of firms' business environment and improve the cyclical properties of an otherwise standard real business cycle model.

Using firm-level data from a large-scale European survey among 20 countries, we analyse the determinants of firms using short-time work (STW). We show that firms are more likely to use STW in case of negative demand shocks. We show that STW schemes are more likely to be used by firms with high degrees of firm-specific human capital, high firing costs, and operating in countries with stringent employment protection legislation and a high degree of downward nominal wage rigidity. STW use is higher in countries with formalised schemes and in countries where these schemes were extended in response to the recent crisis. On the wider economic impact of STW, we show that firms using the schemes are significantly less likely to lay off permanent workers in response to a negative shock, with no impact for temporary workers. Relating our STW take-up measure in the micro data to aggregate data on employment and output trends, we show that sectors with a high STW take-up exhibit significantly less cyclical variation in employment.

Crossing institutional or regulatory boundaries often goes together with discontinuities, be it price, wage or indeed wealth discontinuities. This paper identifies substantial wealth differences between Luxembourg resident households and cross-border commuter households. The average (median) net wealth difference is estimated to be €367,000 (€129,000) and increases for higher percentiles. Using several different regression and decomposition techniques, spatial (regional) differences in real estate price developments, and thus differences in accumulated nominal capital gains, are shown to be the main driving factor for these wealth differences. Other contributing factors are differences in age, income, education and other household characteristics.