The studies produced in these research networks constitute important contributions to our understanding of price and wage rigidities and I myself was impressed when Frank Smets presented the findings of the Inflation Persistence Network in a seminar for the Governing Council of the ECB. Frank Smets will give a similar presentation here.
I am also pleased that tomorrow morning Bill Dickens from The Brookings Institute will present the results of the International Wage Flexibility Project. In addition, some other papers will provide us with new material based on micro-economic datasets of prices and wages. Besides measuring the degree of price and wage rigidities, it is also important to understand their economic rationale.