This paper shows that the EMU has not affected historical characteristics of member countries' business cycles and their cross-correlations. Member countries which had similar levels of GDP per-capita in the seventies have also experienced similar business cycles since then and no significant...

This paper evaluates models that exploit timely monthly releases to compute early estimates of current quarter GDP (now-casting) in the euro area. We compare traditional methods used at institutions with a new method proposed by Giannone, Reichlin, and Small (2005). The method consists in...

We decompose euro area sovereign bond yields into five distinct components: i) expected future short-term risk-free rates and a term premium, ii) default risk premium, iii) redenomination risk premium, iv) liquidity risk premium, and a v) segmentation (convenience) premium. Iden- tification is...

We study spillovers from bank to sovereign risk in the euro area using difference specifications around the European Central Bank's release of stress test results for 130 significant banks on October 26, 2014. We document that following this information release bank equity prices in stressed...

This paper studies the relationship between the business cycle and financial intermediation in the euro area. We establish stylized facts and study their stability during the global financial crisis and the European sovereign debt crisis. Long-term interest rates have been exceptionally high and...

A safe asset is of high credit quality, retains its value in bad times, and is traded in liquid markets. We show that bonds issued by the European Union (EU) are widely considered to be of high credit quality, and that their yield spread over German Bunds remained contained during the 2020...