Since the 1970s the characteristics of international business cycles have changed and deeper economic integration has modified the features of cross-country comovement. We formally test for correlation shifts in measures of real economic activity and economic/financial integration. In Europe we...

This paper challenges the assumption that the inflation process within the euro area is well-described by a linear Phillips curve and investigates in a nonparametric framework how inflation is sensitive to output growth. An asymmetric output-inflation trade-off is pointed out in the euro area at...

This paper analyzes market integration among long term government bonds in the Eurozone since the inception of the Euro in 1999. While it is commonly assumed that markets for EMU government bonds were closely integrated prior to the EMU debt crisis, we find that there is significant time...

It is commonly found that the markets for long-term government bonds of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) countries were integrated prior to the EMU debt crisis. Contrasting this, we show, based on the interrelation between market integration and fractional cointegration, that there were periods...

This paper addresses the estimation of Phillips curve equations for the euro area while employing less stringent assumptions on the functional correspondence between price inflation, inflation expectations, and marginal costs. Expectations are not assumed to be an unbiased predictor of actual...

This paper addresses the estimation of Phillips curve equations for the euro area while employing less stringent assumptions on the functional correspondence between price inflation, inflation expectations and marginal costs. Expectations are not assumed to be an unbiased predictor of actual...

Convergence and synchronisation of business and growth cycles are important issues in the efficient formulation of euro area economic policies, and in particular European Central Bank (ECB) monetary policy. Although several studies in the economics literature address the issue of synchronicity...

This paper proposes a hierarchical modeling approach to perform stochastic model specification in Markov switching vector error correction models. We assume that a common distribution gives rise to the regime-specific regression coefficients. The mean as well as the variances of this...

We analyze the predictive power of seven leading indicators for economic activity inthe Euro Area developed by different banks, institutions and research centers. Ourcomparison is conducted in a bivariate vector autoregressive framework. Indicators arecompared by means of an in-sample and an...

This paper analyses the Nairu in the Euro Area and the influence that hysteresis had on its development. Using the Kalman-filter technique we find that the Nairu has varied considerably since the early seventies. The Kalman-filter technique is applied here using explicit exogenous variables. In...