An Essential Guide to Pricing Decisions in the Euro Area: How Firms Set Prices and Why

2008-07-25 16:06:04 -

www.researchandmarkets.com - Research and Markets (www.researchandmarkets.com/research/fb8c17/pricing_decisions) has announced the addition of the "Pricing Decisions in the Euro Area: How Firms Set Prices and Why" report to their offering.

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.

Key Topics Covered:

-- The Use of Survey Data to Investigate Price Setting: Theory and the Research Design for the Euro Area

-- Summary of Results for the Euro Area

-- Price Reactions to Demand and Cost Shocks: Survey Evidence from Austrian Firms

-- Why Are Prices Sticky? Evidence from an Ad Hoc Survey in Belgium

-- Asymmetries in Price Setting: Some Evidence from French Survey Data

-- Price Setting in German Manufacturing: Evidence from New Survey Data

-- The Pricing Behavior of Italian Firms: New Survey Evidence on Price Stickiness

-- A Survey of Price Setting Practices of Luxembourg Firms

-- The Pricing Behavior of Dutch Firms: Survey Evidence on Price Stickiness

-- How Portuguese Firms Set Their Prices: Evidence from Survey Data

-- The Pricing Behavior of Spanish Firms

-- A Comparison Based on International Survey Evidence

-- Competition and Price Adjustment in the Euro Area

-- What Quantitative Micro Data Reveal about Price Setting Behavior

-- Policy Lessons and Directions for Ongoing Research

For more information visit www.researchandmarkets.com/research/fb8c17/pricing_decisions

Source: Oxford University Press

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