This paper investigates the time-varying correlation between the EU12-wide business cycle and the initial EU12 member-countries based on Scalar-BEKK and multivariate Riskmetrics model frameworks for the period 1980-2012. The paper provides evidence that changes in the business cycle...

A positive economic growth is one crucial macroeconomic objective of every nation. Many countries have formed regional as well as international trading blocs in an attempt to enhance economic growth and maximise welfare of each member state, the AFTZ member states are not an exception. This...

There are competing views of how HIV/AIDS affects saving, and to a lesser extent, investment. One argument is that saving is reduced because of the disease; the other is that saving is actually increased. We find that saving is negatively impacted by the disease in poorer countries but increased...

Within the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the gender equality in education is considered one of the most challenging goals for most developing economies. Using Panel Least Square with Regional Dummies (LSDV) for a sample of Developing countries over the period 1990 to 2014,...

Recent developments in the business cycle empirical literature for the developed economies show that there is an increasing synchronization of the cycles in the sense that cycles are of approximately equal wave length, and exhibit similar lead-lag patterns and decreasing volatility over time,...

This paper assesses the level of readiness of Romania to adopt euro, based on nominal and real convergence criteria evaluation. We used the optimal currency area criteria in order to assess the real convergence process in Romania. The main conclusion of the paper is that more progress is...

This paper explores the impact of country size on labor market flexibility in a monetary union with a common monetary policy as conducted in EMU. I apply a Barro-Gordon framework and test its result empirically for EMU. Results confirm that small countries demand higher labor market flexibility...

We use wavelet analysis to investigate to what extent individual U.S. states' business cycles are synchronized. The results show that the U.S. states are remarkably well synchronized compared to the previous findings w.r.t. the Euro Area. There is also a strong and significant correlation...

This paper examines the synchronization of business cycles across the G7 countries during US recessions since the 1870's. Using a dynamic measure of business cycle synchronization, results depend on the globalisation period under consideration. On average, US recessions have significantly...

This paper investigates whether the East African Community (EAC) constitutes an optimum currency area (OCA) by estimating the degree and evolution of business cycle synchronization between the EAC countries. We also investigate whether the degree of business cycle synchronization has improved...