Daniel A. Dias

Price setting in the euro area : some stylised facts from individual producer price data

This paper documents producer price setting in 6 countries of the euro area: Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Portugal. It collects evidence from available studies on each of those countries and also provides new evidence. These studies use monthly producer price data. The following five stylised facts emerge consistently across countries. First, producer prices change infrequently: each month around 21% of prices change. Second, there is substantial cross-sector heterogeneity in the frequency of price changes: prices change very often in the energy sector, less often in food and intermediate goods and least often in non-durable non- food and durable goods. Third, countries have a similar ranking of industries in terms of frequency of price changes. Fourth, there is no evidence of downward nominal rigidity: price changes are for about 45% decreases and 55% increases. Fifth, price changes are sizeable compared to the inflation rate. The paper also examines the factors driving producer price changes. It finds that costs structure, competition, seasonality, inflation and attractive pricing all play a role in driving producer price changes. In addition producer prices tend to be more flexible than consumer prices.

Duration of Capital Market Exclusion: An Empirical Investigation

We document the time countries are excluded from international capital markets after resolving a default and examine why some countries are able to regain access to international capital markets immediately after resolving a default, whereas other countries are punished for longer periods. We develop a methodology to determine when market access occurs after default settlement, distinguishing between partial and full access. Our main findings from examining the duration of exclusion from international capital markets between 1980-2005 by sovereign defaulters are: i) countries regain partial market access after 5.7 years on average (median of 3.0 years) while it takes 8.4 years on average (median of 7.0 years) to regain full market access; ii) partial market access depends mostly on external financial markets conditions; iii) full market access depends primarily on long term market expectations and the size of the losses inflicted to creditors; iv) the occurrence of a natural disaster reduces the period of exclusion for both partial and full access; and v) there are regional differences, with African and Middle Eastern defaulters taking substantially longer to regain market access than other regions.

Learning, Prices, and Firm Dynamics

This paper documents new facts about the joint evolution of firm performance and prices in international markets and proposes a theory of firm dynamics emphasizing the interaction between learning about demand and quality choice to explain the observed patterns. Using data from the Portuguese manufacturing sector, the paper documents that: (1) within narrow product categories, firms with longer spells of activity in export destinations tend to ship larger quantities at similar prices, thus obtaining larger export revenue; (2) older exporters tend to import more expensive inputs; and (3) revenue growth within destinations (conditional on initial size) tends to decline with market experience. The authors develop a model of endogenous input and output quality choices in a learning environment that is able to quantitatively account for these patterns. Counterfactual simulations reveal that minimum quality standards on exports reduce welfare by lowering entry in export markets and reallocating resources from old and large toward young and small firms.

A Tale of Two Sectors; Why is Misallocation Higher in Services than in Manufacturing?

Recent empirical studies document that the level of resource misallocation in the service sector is significantly higher than in the manufacturing sector. We quantify the importance of this difference and study its sources. Conservative estimates for Portugal (2008) show that closing this gap, by reducing misallocation in the service sector to manufacturing levels, would boost aggregate gross output by around 12 percent and aggregate value added by around 31 percent. Differences in the effect and size of productivity shocks explain most of the gap in misallocation between manufacturing and services, while the remainder is explained by differences in firm productivity and age distribution. We interpret these results as stemming mainly from higher output price rigidity, greater labor adjustment costs and more informality in the service sector.

The Effect of Monetary Policy on Housing Tenure Choice as an Explanation for the Price Puzzle

In this paper we provide an alternative explanation for the price puzzle (Sims 1992) based on the effect of monetary policy on housing tenure choice and the weight of the shelter component in overall CPI. In the presence of nominal or financial frictions, when interest rates increase, the real cost of owning a house increases, and this increase may make some people prefer to rent instead of buying. This change in consumption behavior increases the price of rents relative to other goods. Starting in 1983, homeownership costs are based on a measure of implied owner equivalent rent, which is calculated using observed house rents. This change implies that, directly and indirectly, prices in the rental market almost entirely command the shelter component of CPI, which weighs around 30% in the overall index. When we take these two pieces into account and use CPI net of shelter services as a measure of inflation, we obtain impulse responses of prices to a monetary contraction shock more in line with what is predicted by theory. In addition, our results also suggest that inflation is much less persistent than what is implied by analyses using a measure of inflation that includes shelter services. Our results pass a long list of robustness check exercises and compare well against other explanations of the price puzzle.

What Happens after Default? Stylized Facts on Access to Credit

In this paper we investigate what happens to firms after they default on their bank loans. We approach this question by establishing a set of stylized facts concerning the evolution of default and its resolution, focusing on access to credit after default. Using a unique dataset from Portugal, we observe that half of the default episodes last 5 quarters or less and that larger firms have shorter default periods. Most firms continue to have access to credit immediately after default, though only a minority has access to new loans. Firms have more difficulties in regaining access to credit if they are small, if their default was long and severe, if they borrow from only one bank or if they default with their main lender. Further, half of the defaulting firms record another default in the future. We observe that firms with repeated defaults are, on average, smaller and have experienced longer and more severe defaults.

Debt Statistics a la Carte : Alternative Recipes for Measuring Government Indebtedness

In this note, we apply our same measurement techniques to the debts of Greece, Ireland and Portugal and show that plausible alternative measures of indebtedness suggest that Greece is anywhere from as much as 50% more indebted, to as little as half as indebted as either Portugal or Ireland. We argue that most reasonable measures imply that Greece is far less indebted than is commonly reported, and that indebtedness levels across these three economies are roughly similar.