This book collects results from ad hoc surveys on firms pricing behavior conducted in 2003 and 2004 by nine National central banks of the Euro area in the context of a joint research project (Eurosystem Inflation Persistence Network). These surveys have proved to be an efficient way to test theories on the pricing strategies of economic agents, documenting, in qualitative terms, the underlying rationale of the observed pricing patterns. The book provides an unprecedented amount of information from more than 11,000 euro area firms, addressing issues such as the relevance of nominal and real rigidities, the information set used by firms in the price setting process, the strategy followed to review prices, the frequency of both price reviews and price changes, the reasons underlying price stickiness, and asymmetries in price adjustment. It also compares results for the euro area to those obtained for other countries by similar studies. Finally, it draws the main implications for theoretical modeling and for monetary policy.

This book addresses the important issue of food prices across EU Member States. Although recent attention has focused on events in world commodity markets following the spikes in world prices in 2007-2008 and 2011, there has been comparatively little attention addressing food price dynamics at the retail level. This volume addresses the characteristics of retail food price behaviour and the nature and drivers of price transmission across the EU. There are several inter-related features of the research reported here. First, the volume reports the characteristics of retail food inflation across the EU and the extent to which it differs from non-food inflation. Second, given the different experience of food inflation across EU Member States, it details the process of price transmission as shocks from upstream and world markets are passed through the food sector to the retail stage. Third, it addresses how the extent and nature of price transmission is determined by various aspects of competition throughout the domestic food sector and how the nature of vertical contracting between stages can determine the price transmission process. Finally, it outlines the potential of high-frequency, product-specific scanner data to address price dynamics and adjustment issues and how scanner data can also be used to measure food price inflation. The book will be of interest to researchers on price transmission and competition issues in the EU and, given the wider interest on these issues coupled with the novel use of scanner data, to researchers further afield. The contributions will also be of interest to policymakers and stakeholders as they seek to make sense of, and to address, regulation issues as they relate to the food sector.

We examine economic convergence among euro area countries on multiple dimensions. While there was nominal convergence of inflation and interest rates, real convergence of per capita income levels has not occurred among the original euro area members since the advent of the common currency. Income convergence stagnated in the early years of the common currency and has reversed in the wake of the global economic crisis. New euro area members, in contrast, have seen real income convergence. Business cycles became more synchronized, but the amplitude of those cycles diverged. Financial cycles showed a similar pattern: sychronizing more over time, but with divergent amplitudes. Income convergence requires reforms boosting productivity growth in lagging countries, while cyclical and financial convergence can be enhanced by measures to improve national and euro area fiscal policies, together with steps to deepen the single market.

The Theory of Industrial Organization is the first primary text to treat the new industrial organization at the advanced-undergraduate and graduate level. Rigorously analytical and filled with exercises coded to indicate level of difficulty, it provides a unified and modern treatment of the field with accessible models that are simplified to highlight robust economic ideas while working at an intuitive level. To aid students at different levels, each chapter is divided into a main text and supplementary section containing more advanced material. Each chapter opens with elementary models and builds on this base to incorporate current research in a coherent synthesis. Tirole begins with a background discussion of the theory of the firm. In Part I he develops the modern theory of monopoly, addressing single product and multi product pricing, static and intertemporal price discrimination, quality choice, reputation, and vertical restraints. In Part II, Tirole takes up strategic interaction between firms, starting with a novel treatment of the Bertrand-Cournot interdependent pricing problem. He studies how capacity constraints, repeated interaction, product positioning, advertising, and asymmetric information affect competition or tacit collusion. He then develops topics having to do with long term competition, including barriers to entry, contestability, exit, and research and development. He concludes with a "game theory user's manual" and a section of review exercises. Important Notice: The digital edition of this book is missing some of the images found in the physical edition.

Although Europe in the aggregate is a not a major contributor to global current account imbalances, its trade and financial linkages with the rest of the world mean that it will still be affected by a shift in the current configuration of external deficits and surpluses. We assess the macroeconomic impact on Europe of global current account adjustment under alternative scenarios, emphasizing both trade and financial channels. Finally, we consider heterogeneous exposure across individual European economies to external adjustment shocks.

New regulatory data reveal extensive price discrimination against non-financial clients in the FX derivatives market. The client at the 90th percentile pays an effective spread of 0.5%, while the bottom quarter incur transaction costs of less than 0.02%. Consistent with models of search frictions in over-the-counter markets, dealers charge higher spreads to less sophisticated clients. However, price discrimination is eliminated when clients trade through multi-dealer request-for-quote platforms. We also document that dealers extract rents from captive clients and market opacity, but only for contracts negotiated bilaterally with unsophisticated clients.