Before the financial and economic crisis, monetary policy unification and interest rate convergence resulted in the divergence of euroarea countries' financial cycles. This divergence is deeply rooted in the financial integration spurred by currency union and strongly correlated with intra-euro...

In this paper we use empirical cross-country correlation coefficients of GDP- and private consumption data as a measure of financial integration between the current EU-member states and the central and eastern European accession states. We find, that the so-called consumption correlation puzzle...

Using dynamic factor models and state-space techniques we quantify financial cycles for twenty European countries over the period 1960Q1–2015Q4 capturing imbalances across credit, housing, bond and equity markets. The paper documents the existence of slow-moving and persistent financial cycles...