This paper examines whether European integration, manifesting itself in increased trade and FDI linkages, new specializations and economic policy coordination, contributed to the synchronization of business cycles in the enlarged EU. We estimate the effects on bilateral growth rate correlations...

This paper employs a structural VAR framework with sign restrictions to estimate the effects of unconventional monetary policies of the European Central Bank since the Global Financial Crisis, mainly in their effectiveness towards bank lending. Using a variable for newly issued credit instead of...

The paper investigates the macroeconomic and financial effects of oil prices shocks in the euro area since its creation in 1999, with a special focus on the recent slump. The analysis is carried out episode by episode, within a time-varying parameter framework, consistent with the view that "not...

We adopt an unobserved components time series model to extract financial cycles for the United States and the five largest euro area countries over the period 1970 to 2014. We find that credit, the credit-to-GDP ratio and house prices have medium-term cycles which share a few common statistical...

The Euro Area is characterized by little variation in unemployment and strongly procyclical labor productivity. We capture both characteristics in a New Keynesian business cycle model with labor search frictions, where labor can vary along three margins: employment, hours, and effort. We...

In a highly interlinked global economy a key question for policy makers is how foreign shocks and policies transmit to the domestic economy. We develop a semi-structural multi-country model with rich real and financial channels of international shock propagation for the euro area, the US, Japan,...

In a highly interlinked global economy a key question for policy makers is how foreign shocks and policies transmit to the domestic economy. We develop a semi-structural multi-country model with rich real and financial channels of international shock propagation for the euro area, the US, Japan,...