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Nicola Benatti
- 29 October 2024
- ECONOMIC BULLETIN - ARTICLEEconomic Bulletin Issue 7, 2024Details
- Abstract
- The Survey on the Access to Finance of Enterprises (SAFE) provides information on the financing needs of euro area firms, their economic performance, and the availability of external funding. The article illustrates the role that the SAFE has played over the past 15 years. First, it discusses the contribution of the survey to assessing the transmission of monetary policy decisions to firms’ access to finance and their financing conditions. Second, the article shows how SAFE-based data provide timely evidence of the impact of economic crises on firms’ performance. Third, the article documents the ability of SAFE-based indicators to track important shifts in the economic business cycle. Finally, the article discusses new survey modules that facilitate the analysis of the pricing and wage-setting behaviour of firms, along with their inflation expectations.
- JEL Code
- C83 : Mathematical and Quantitative Methods→Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology, Computer Programs→Survey Methods, Sampling Methods
D22 : Microeconomics→Production and Organizations→Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
E58 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit→Central Banks and Their Policies
G32 : Financial Economics→Corporate Finance and Governance→Financing Policy, Financial Risk and Risk Management, Capital and Ownership Structure, Value of Firms, Goodwill
- 17 June 2024
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 2946Details
- Abstract
- We examine the extent to which environmental regulation affects innovation and which policy types provide the strongest incentives to innovate. Using a local projection framework, we estimate the regulatory impact on patenting activity over a five-year horizon. As a proxy for environmental policy exposure, we estimate firm-level greenhouse gas emissions using a machine learning algorithm. At the country-level, policy tightening is largely associated with no statistically significant change in environmental technology innovation. At the firm-level, however, environmental policy tightening leads to higher innovation activity in technologies mitigating climate change, while the effect on innovation in other technologies is muted. This suggests that environmental regulation does not lead to a crowding-out of non-clean innovations. The policy type matters, as increasing the stringency of technology support policies and non-market based policies leads to increases in clean technology patenting, while we do not find a statistically significant impact of market-based policies.
- JEL Code
- O44 : Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth→Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity→Environment and Growth
Q52 : Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics, Environmental and Ecological Economics→Environmental Economics→Pollution Control Adoption Costs, Distributional Effects, Employment Effects
Q58 : Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics, Environmental and Ecological Economics→Environmental Economics→Government Policy
- 8 February 2024
- OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES - No. 338Details
- Abstract
- This paper introduces innovative, newly developed forward-looking indicators of negotiated wage growth in the euro area using data on collective bargaining agreements from seven countries: Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Austria and Greece. The paper demonstrates how agreement-level data can be used to study drivers of aggregate negotiated wage growth, as well as monitor the breadth of wage increases and account for time-varying factors such as one-off payments, when assessing wage pressures. Lastly, the paper shows that the new indicators can provide reliable signals about current and future developments of wage pressures in the euro area while also serving as important cross-checking tools for negotiated wage growth forecasts.
- JEL Code
- E24 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy→Employment, Unemployment, Wages, Intergenerational Income Distribution, Aggregate Human Capital
J31 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs→Wage Level and Structure, Wage Differentials
J50 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Labor?Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining→General
- 23 May 2023
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 2820Details
- Abstract
- This paper analyses the impact of changes in environmental regulations on productivity growth at country- and firm-level. We exploit several data sources and the environmen-tal policy stringency index, to evaluate the Porter hypothesis, according to which firms’ productivity can benefit from more stringent environmental policies. By using panel local projections, we estimate the regulatory impact over a five-year horizon. The identification of causal impacts of regulatory changes is achieved by the estimation of firms’ CO2 emissions via a machine learning algorithm. At country- and firm-level, policy tightening affects high-polluters’ productivity negatively and stronger than their less-polluting peers. However, among high-polluting firms, large ones experience positive total factor productivity growth due to easier access to finance and greater innovativeness. Hence, we do not find support for the Porter hypothesis in general. However for technology support policies and firms with the required resources, policy tightening can enhance productivity.
- JEL Code
- O44 : Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth→Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity→Environment and Growth
Q52 : Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics, Environmental and Ecological Economics→Environmental Economics→Pollution Control Adoption Costs, Distributional Effects, Employment Effects
Q58 : Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics, Environmental and Ecological Economics→Environmental Economics→Government Policy
- 7 July 2022
- ECONOMIC BULLETIN - BOXEconomic Bulletin Issue 5, 2022Details
- Abstract
- This box analyses the selling price expectations among euro area firms based on the results from the most recent Survey on the Access to Finance of Enterprises in the euro area. To better understand the price-setting behaviour of firms in a context of high inflationary pressures, the April 2022 Survey included additional questions on the selling price expectations of firms and factors influencing their pricing decisions. By providing the perspective of firms, this box sheds light on the current inflation outlook.
- JEL Code
- C83 : Mathematical and Quantitative Methods→Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology, Computer Programs→Survey Methods, Sampling Methods
D22 : Microeconomics→Production and Organizations→Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
D84 : Microeconomics→Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty→Expectations, Speculations
L11 : Industrial Organization→Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance→Production, Pricing, and Market Structure, Size Distribution of Firms
- 6 January 2021
- ECONOMIC BULLETIN - BOXEconomic Bulletin Issue 8, 2020Details
- Abstract
- Can the indicator of negotiated wage rates play an especially important role in assessing and forecasting wage dynamics at the current juncture? While the data on negotiated wages are available on a more timely basis, negotiated wage growth tends to only react with some lag to changes in labour market conditions, owing to the nature of the negotiation process, and the indicator is currently still dominated by wage agreements agreed prior to the pandemic. The main effects of the pandemic on negotiated wage growth are likely to become visible only from 2021 – when a substantial share of wage contracts in euro area countries is due to be renegotiated. Wage drift developments, in conjunction with information on hours worked and unemployment, can provide some indications regarding the environment in which these negotiations will take place. The availability of more granular data, for example on negotiated wage growth in different sectors, would be very helpful in analysing euro area wage developments in more detail.
- JEL Code
- H24 : Public Economics→Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue→Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies
J30 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs→General
J31 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs→Wage Level and Structure, Wage Differentials
- 29 July 2020
- ECONOMIC BULLETIN - BOXEconomic Bulletin Issue 5, 2020Details
- Abstract
- This box examines high-frequency data to quantify the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on both job postings and hiring patterns in the euro area. Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, both of these indicators had increased steadily year on year, reflecting a rise in the number of job findings in the euro area. However, both the Indeed job postings and the LinkedIn hiring rate have declined significantly since the onset of the COVID-19 crisis and the lockdowns, with the hiring rate bottoming out in May 2020. While the decline in the hiring rate was broad-based across sectors, the intensity of the COVID-19 shock is asymmetric, with sectors such as recreation, travel and manufacturing being more affected by the crisis than others, such as healthcare, software and IT services sectors. Based on the high-frequency information derived from the hiring rate, the implied unemployment rate is expected to peak during the second quarter of 2020 and to be around 2.3 percentage points higher than in February. Overall, the methodology and the high-frequency data used in this box allow for a timely assessment of developments in the euro area labour market. The use of job flows in and out of unemployment helps to enhance our understanding of the labour market adjustment during the current COVID-19 crisis.
- JEL Code
- E24 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy→Employment, Unemployment, Wages, Intergenerational Income Distribution, Aggregate Human Capital
E27 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy→Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
- 18 February 2014
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 1634Details
- Abstract
- Drawing from confidential firm-level balance sheets in 11 European countries, the paper presents a novel sectoral database of comparable productivity indicators built by members of the Competitiveness Research Network (CompNet) using a newly developed research infrastructure. Beyond aggregate information available from industry statistics of Eurostat or EU KLEMS, the paper provides information on the distribution of firms across several dimensions related to competitiveness, e.g. productivity and size. The database comprises so far 11 countries, with information for 58 sectors over the period 1995-2011. The paper documents the development of the new research infrastructure, describes the database, and shows some preliminary results. Among them, it shows that there is large heterogeneity in terms of firm productivity or size within narrowly defined industries in all countries. Productivity, and above all, size distribution are very skewed across countries, with a thick left-tail of low productive firms. Moreover, firms at both ends of the distribution show very different dynamics in terms of productivity and unit labour costs. Within-sector heterogeneity and productivity dispersion are positively correlated to aggregate productivity given the possibility of reallocating resources from less to more productive firms. To this extent, we show how allocative efficiency varies across countries, and more interestingly, over different periods of time. Finally, we apply the new database to illustrate the importance of productivity dispersion to explain aggregate trade results.
- JEL Code
- L11 : Industrial Organization→Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance→Production, Pricing, and Market Structure, Size Distribution of Firms
L25 : Industrial Organization→Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior→Firm Performance: Size, Diversification, and Scope
D24 : Microeconomics→Production and Organizations→Production, Cost, Capital, Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity, Capacity
O4 : Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth→Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity
O57 : Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth→Economywide Country Studies→Comparative Studies of Countries - Network
- Competitiveness Research Network