During the process of accession to the Eurozone, some member countries experienced a rapid increase in credit availability fueled by the fast convergence of interest rates. This was accompanied by large current account deficits and booms in the housing sector. This paper argues that these...

A case of success up until the 1990s, the Portuguese economy entered into a boom and a long slump with the adoption of the Euro. Entering with an overvalued exchange rate the country required an adjustment process based on deflation and productivity expansion. However, policies undertaken...

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...

In this paper we study fiscal policy effects and fiscal space for countries in a monetary union with different levels of public debt. We develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model of a two-country monetary union, calibrated to match the characteristics of Spain and Germany, in...

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...