Recent economic developments have shown the importance of spillover and contagion effects in financial markets as well as in macroeconomic reality. Such effects are not limited to relations between the levels of variables but also impact on the volatility and the distributions. We propose a...

This paper aims at improving the understanding of the transmission of shocks across countries and how this transmission may have changed over time. By employing a model that allows for parameter changes across regimes, we show that transmission of shocks from the US to European countries may...

We use a 12-dimensional VAR to examine the dynamic effects on the labor market of four structural technology and policy shocks. For each shock, we examine the dynamic e®ects on the labor market, the importance of the shock for labor market volatility, and the comovement between labor market...

A fresh interpretaion is provided of the influential finding that the markup of prices over marginal costs is counter-cyclical. Using Rotemberg and Woodford's data set we argue that the markup is best modelled as a variable that is integrated of order one. A consequence of this finding is that...

Modern theories of inflation incorporate a vertical long-run Phillips curve and are usually estimated using techniques that ignore the non-stationary behaviour of inflation. Consequently, the estimates obtained are imprecise and are unable to distinguish between competing models of inflation and...

This paper considers whether the Euro-area economies have become more competitive since the introduction of the Euro and the implementation of the Lisbon strategy. Using a measure of the markup as a proxy for competition we show that while the markup has varied considerably over the past 25...

This paper deals with the existence of a common European growth cycle and its identification. Based on the analysis of some descriptive statistics in the time and frequency domain there is clear evidence of comovement in output growth among European countries.

There is a wide literature on the dynamic adjustment of employment and its relationship with the business cycle. Our aim is to propose a statistical model that offers a congruent representation of post-war US employment and output data. We use a cointegrated vector autoregressive...

This paper analyzes the effects of a ban on smoking in public places upon firms and consumers. Analysis of survey data from public houses finds that the Scottish smoking ban (introduced in March 2006) reduced pub sales and harmed medium run profitability. An event study analysis of the stock...

Recent economic developments have shown the importance of spillover and contagion effects in financial markets. Such effects are not limited to relations between the levels of financial variables but also impact on their volatility. I investigate Granger causality in conditional mean and...