Time- or State-Dependence? An Analysis of Inflation Dynamics using German Business Survey Data

This paper evaluates the predictions of different price setting theories using a new dataset constructed from a large panel of business surveys of German retail firms over the period 1970-2010. The dataset contains firm-specific information on both price realizations and expectations. Aggregating the price data we find clear evidence in favor of state-dependence; for periods of relatively high and volatile inflation not only the size of price changes (intensive margin) but also the fraction of price adjustment (extensive margin) is important for aggregate inflation dynamics. Moreover, at the business cycle frequency, variations in the extensive margin explain a large fraction of inflation variability even for moderate inflation periods. This holds both for price realizations and expectations suggesting a role for state-dependent sticky plan models. Moreover, results from a structural sign-restriction VAR model show that the extensive margin reacts significantly to a monetary policy shock and is more important for the response of overall inflation than the intensive margin conditional on the shock. These findings confirm the validity of state-dependent pricing models that stress the importance of the extensive margin - even for low inflation periods

Time- or State-Dependence? An Analysis of Inflation Dynamics using German Business Survey Data

This paper evaluates the predictions of different price setting theories using a new dataset constructed from a large panel of business surveys of German retail firms over the period 1970-2010. The dataset contains firm-specific information on both price realizations and expectations. Aggregating the price data we find clear evidence in favor of state-dependence; for periods of relatively high and volatile inflation not only the size of price changes (intensive margin) but also the fraction of price adjustment (extensive margin) is important for aggregate inflation dynamics. Moreover, at the business cycle frequency, variations in the extensive margin explain a large fraction of inflation variability even for moderate inflation periods. This holds both for price realizations and expectations suggesting a role for state-dependent sticky plan models. Moreover, results from a structural sign-restriction VAR model show that the extensive margin reacts significantly to a monetary policy shock and is more important for the response of overall inflation than the intensive margin conditional on the shock. These findings confirm the validity of state-dependent pricing models that stress the importance of the extensive margin - even for low inflation periods.Price setting behavior; time dependent pricing; state dependent pricing; monetary policy transmission

Predictive Ability of Business Cycle Indicators under Test: A Case Study for the Euro Area Industrial Production

In this paper we assess the information content of seven widely cited early indicators for the euro area with respect to forecasting area-wide industrial production. To this end, we use various tests that are designed to compare competing forecast models. In addition to the standard Diebold-Mariano test, we employ tests that account for specific problems typically encountered in forecast exercises. Specifically, we pay attention to nested model structures, we alleviate the problem of data snooping arising from multiple pairwise testing, and we analyze the structural stability in the relative forecast performance of one indicator compared to a benchmark model. Moreover, we consider loss functions that overweight forecast errors in booms and recessions to check whether a specific indicator that appears to be a good choice on average is also preferable in times of economic stress. We find that on average three indicators have superior forecast ability, namely the EuroCoin indicator, the OECD composite leading indicator, and the FAZ-Euro indicator published by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. If one is interested in one-month forecasts only, the business climate indicator of the European Commission yields the smallest errors. However, the results are not completely invariant against the choice of the loss function. Moreover, rolling local tests reveal that the indicators are particularly useful in times of unusual changes in industrial production while the simple autoregressive benchmark is difficult to beat during time of average production growth

Monetary Policy Transmission and House Prices: European Cross Country Evidence

This paper explores the importance of housing and mortgage market heterogeneity in 13 European countries for the transmission of monetary policy. We use a pooled VAR model which is estimated over the period 1995-2006 to generate impulse responses of key macroeconomic variables to a monetary policy shock. We split our sample of countries into two disjoint groups according to the impact of the monetary policy shock on real house prices. Our results suggest that in countries with a more pronounced reaction of real house prices the propagation of monetary policy shocks to macroeconomic variables is amplified.Pooled VAR model, house prices, monetary policy transmission, country clusters, sign restrictions

Predictive Ability of Business Cycle Indicators under Test: A Case Study for the Euro Area Industrial Production

In this paper we assess the information content of seven widely cited early indicators for the euro area with respect to forecasting area-wide industrial production. To this end, we use various tests that are designed to compare competing forecast models. In addition to the standard Diebold-Mariano test, we employ tests that account for specific problems typically encountered in forecast exercises. Specifically, we pay attention to nested model structures, we alleviate the problem of data snooping arising from multiple pairwise testing, and we analyze the structural stability in the relative forecast performance of one indicator compared to a benchmark model. Moreover, we consider loss functions that overweight forecast errors in booms and recessions to check whether a specific indicator that appears to be a good choice on average is also preferable in times of economic stress. We find that there is not one best indicator that uniformly dominates all its competitors. The optimal choice rather depends on the specific forecast situation and the loss function of the user. For 1-month forecasts the business climate indicator of the European Commission and the OECD composite leading indicator generally work well, for 6-month forecasts the OECD composite leading indicator performs very good by all criteria, and for 12-month forecasts the FAZ-Euro indicator published by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is the only one that can beat the benchmark AR(1) model.weighted loss, leading indicators, euro area, forecasting

Monetary Policy Transmission and House Prices: European Cross-country Evidence

This paper explores the importance of housing and mortgage market heterogeneity in 12 European countries for the transmission of monetary policy. We use a panel VAR model which is estimated over the period 1995–2006 to generate impulse responses of key macroeconomic variables to a monetary policy shock. We propose a data–driven approach that splits our panel of countries into two disjoint groups according to the impact of the monetary policy shock on real house prices. Our results show that in countries with a more pronounced reaction of real house prices the propagation of monetary policy shocks to macroeconomic variables is amplified.panel VAR model, house prices, monetary policy transmission, country clusters, sign restrictions