Car prices in Europe are characterized by large and persistent di®erences across countries. The purpose of this paper is to document and explain this price dispersion. Using a panel data set extending from 1980 to 1993, we ̄rst demonstrate two main facts concerning car prices in Europe: (1) The existence of signi ̄cant di®erences in quality adjusted prices across countries, with Italy and the U....

REAL GROSS domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annual rate of 6.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to the “preliminary” estimates of the national income and product accounts (NIPAs) (chart 1 and table1).1 In the third quarter, real GDP declined 0.5 percent. The fourth-quarter decrease was the largest since the first quarter of 1982. It was revised down 2.4 percentage points f...

In many mainstream macroeconomic models, sticky prices play an important role in explaining the effects of monetary policy on the economy. Various theories have been set forth to explain why prices are sticky. This study takes a firm-level survey approach, in a spirit similar to Blinder et al. (1998), to shed some light on the question of why prices are sticky. In particular, the Bank of Canada...