In this paper we argue that, for a group of converging economies of the European Union, participation in the euro area has been associated with easier access to financing by domestic economic agents. Easier access to financing was a significant impulse leading to a sharp increase in households'...

We develop a Markov Switching model for inflation with time-varying transition probabilities. Inflation is characterized by two regimes (high and low inflation) and the probability of regime changes depends on money growth. Using Bayesian techniques, we apply the model to the euro area, Germany,...

This paper seeks to address the policy issue of the usefulness of financial spreads as indicators of future inflation and output growth in the countries of the European Union, placing a particular focus on out-of-sample forecasting performance. Such analysis is of considerable relevance to...

Long-run properties of EU-wide money aggregates are analysed. For each of the three aggregates considered - Currency, M1 and M3H - it is possible to obtain cointegrating relationships with GDP and interest rates (long or short term market interest rates). Results are not improved when...