Mika Kuismanen
- 10 April 2006
- OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES - No. 44Details
- Abstract
- This paper analyses the degree of competition in the euro area services sector and its effects on labour productivity and relative prices in that sector over the period 1980-2003. The importance of the euro area services sector has significantly increased over time; it now accounts for around 70% of the euro area's total nominal value added and employment. Labour productivity growth across the euro area services industries appears to be characterised by a high degree of diversity and the level of services inflation is on average higher than aggregate inflation. Investigating several proxies of market competition for the non-financial business services, the paper finds that limited competition in services tends to hamper labour productivity growth in the services sector. Moreover, results tend to suggest that measures aimed at increasing services market competition may have a dampening impact on relative price changes in some services sectors and thus temporarily on aggregate inflation.
- JEL Code
- E : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
- 13 January 2006
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 572Details
- Abstract
- Most of the empirical literature on consumption behaviour over the last decades has focused on estimating Euler equations. However, there is now consensus that data-related problems make this approach unfruitful, especially for answering policy relevant issues. Alternatively, many papers have proposed using the consumption function to forecast behaviour. This paper follows in this tradition, by deriving an analytical consumption function in the presence of intertemporal non-separabilities, "superior information", and income shocks of different nature, both transitory and permanent. The results provide evidence for durability, and show that people are relatively better at forecasting short-term rather than long-term shocks
- JEL Code
- D11 : Microeconomics→Household Behavior and Family Economics→Consumer Economics: Theory
D12 : Microeconomics→Household Behavior and Family Economics→Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
D82 : Microeconomics→Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty→Asymmetric and Private Information, Mechanism Design
E21 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy→Consumption, Saving, Wealth