We study the synchronization of credit booms and busts among 12 major European economies and the United States between 1972-2011. We propose a regression-based procedure to test whether boom-bust phases of credit cycles coincide across countries and to cluster countries with positively...

We set up a two-country, regional model of trade in financial services. Competitive firms in each country manufacture non-traded consumer goods in an uncertain productive environment, borrowing funds from a bank in either the home or the foreign market. Duopolistic banks can choose their levels...

Lending and borrowing interest rates are often slow to adjust to changing capital market conditions. This paper argues that national differences of the pass-through speed in the EU can be regarded as a retail-oriented indicator of financial integration. Based on an ECB database the speed of...

We offer a new explanation for why taxes have become less redistributive in many countries in parallel with an increase in income concentration. When performance-based contracts are needed to incentivize effort, redistribution through progressive income taxes becomes less precisely targeted....

Recent monetary search models emphasize that the real effects of inflation via its impact on price dispersion depend on the level of search costs and, thus, on the level of market integration. For less integrated markets, the inflation-price dispersion nexus is predicted to be asymmetrically...

We examine the effects of increased international integration of both goods and financial markets on business cycle dynamics. To do so, we develop a new econometric framework for modelling cross-country spillovers in which the magnitude of these spillovers is an empirically determined function...