Convergence and synchronisation of business and growth cycles are important issues in the efficient formulation of euro area economic policies, and in particular European Central Bank (ECB) monetary policy. Although several studies in the economics literature address the issue of synchronicity...

Using recent advances in time-varying spectral methods, this research analyses the growth cycles of the core of the euro area in terms of frequency content and phasing of cycles. The methodology uses the continuous wavelet transform (CWT) and also Hilbert wavelet pairs in the setting of a...

In this paper the relationship between the growth of real GDP components is explored in the requency domain using both static and dynamic wavelet analysis. This analysis is carried out separately for the US and UK using quarterly data, and the results are found to be substantially different for...

I propose a theory of information production and learning in credit markets in which the incentives to engage in activities that reveal information about aggregate fundamentals vary over the business cycle and may account for both the excessive optimism that fueled booms preceding financial...

While it is painfully clear that the 'ever closer' monetary and financial union in the EU has run into serious trouble there has been very little study of the degree to which the countries have become similar or different in their economic growth dynamics. This paper therefore goes beyond the...

This paper offers a first systematic evaluation of the evidence on the effects of currency unions on the synchronisation of economic activity. Focusing on Europe, we construct a database of about 3,000 business cycle synchronisation coefficients as well as their design and estimation...