In this study, we test whether regional growth in 11 European countries depends on financial development and suggest the use of cost- and profit-efficiency estimates as quality measures for financial institutions. Contrary to the usual quantitative proxies for financial development, the quality...

​This paper discusses the effects of small banks on economic growth. We first theoretically show that small banks operating at a regional level can spur local economic growth. As compared with big interregional banks, small regional banks are more effective in promoting local economic growth,...

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...

We revisit the empirical performance of the Q theory of investment, explicitly taking into account the frequency dependence of investment, Tobin's Q, and cash flow. The time series are decomposed into orthogonal components of different frequencies using wavelet multiresolution analysis. We find...

The Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT) was developed late last century but has still to be introduced to the vast majority of economists. The HHT transform is a way of extracting the frequency mode features of cycles embedded in any time series using an adaptive data method that can be applied...

The empirical performance of the Q theory of investment can be significantly improved by simultaneously considering the time- and the frequency-varying features of the investment-Q relationship. Using continuous wavelet tools, I assess the investment-Q sensitivity at different frequencies and...

We estimate the U.S. New Keynesian Phillips Curve in the time-frequency domain with continuous wavelet tools, to provide an integrated answer to the three most controversial issues on the Phillips Curve. (1) Has the short-run tradeoff been stable? (2) What has been the role of expectations?...

Despite an increase in research – motivated by the global financial crisis of 2007-08 – empirical studies on the financial cycle are rare compared to those on the business cycle. This paper adds some new evidence to this scarce literature by using a different empirical methodology –...

​This paper first applies the MODWT (Maximal Overlap Discrete Wavelet Transform) to Euro Area quarterly GDP data from 1995-2014 to obtain the underlying cyclical structure of the GDP components. We then design optimal fiscal and monetary policy within a large state-space LQ-tracking wavelet...

Within currency unions, the conventional wisdom is that there should be a high degree of macroeconomic synchronicity between the constituent parts of the union. But this conjecture has never been formally tested by comparing sample of monetary unions with a control sample of countries that do...