Identifying fiscal multipliers is usually constrained by the absence of a counterfactual scenario. Our new data set allows overcoming this problem by making use of the fact that recommendations under the EU's excessive deficit procedure (EDP) provide both a baseline no-policy-change scenario and...

In the present paper it is pointed out that government debt is an obstacle to economic growth. To my belief, the remedy to this problem is to encourage consumption and not to impose taxes onto the consumers. Because, any decrease in their wages and salaries for temporary budgetary purposes, will...

This paper shows that the EMU has not affected historical characteristics of member countries' business cycles and their cross-correlations. Member countries which had similar levels of GDP per-capita in the seventies have also experienced similar business cycles since then and no significant...

This paper proposes a new model-based method to obtain a coincident indicator for the business cycle. A dynamic factor model with trend components and a common cycle component is considered which can be estimated using standard maximum likelihood methods. The multivariate unobserved components...

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...

In addition to quantitative assessment of economic growth using econometric models, business cycle analyses have been proved to be helpful to practitioners in order to assess current economic conditions or to anticipate upcoming fluctuations. In this paper, we focus on the acceleration cycle in...

While it is painfully clear that the 'ever closer' monetary and financial union in the EU has run into serious trouble there has been very little study of the degree to which the countries have become similar or different in their economic growth dynamics. This paper therefore goes beyond the...

This article analyses the frequency components of European business cycles using real GDP by employing multiresolution decomposition (MRD) with the use of maximal overlap discrete wavelet transforms (MODWT). Static wavelet variance and correlation analysis is performed, and phasing is studied...

The aim of this study is to investigate the extent to which the dispersion of real GDP growth rates has changed over the past few years and whether the synchronisation of business cycles has increased among the euro area countries. The study is divided into two main parts. The first focuses on...