The extent of synchronization of national business cycles is a widespread indicator for gauging whether individual countries are indeed ready to adopt a common currency. The occurrence of asymmetric shocks and their consequences in Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) may hamper implementation of...

We analyze business cycle convergence in the EU by focusing on the decoupling vs. convergence hypothesis for central, eastern and south eastern Europe (CESEE). In a nutshell, we fnd that business cycles in CESEE have decoupled considerably from the euro area (EA) during the financial crisis in...

This paper empirically investigates and theoretically reflects on the generality of the "stylized facts" discussed in business cycle analysis. Using OECD data for 1960 - 2010, the duration of business cycles as well as three models capturing core macroeconomic relations are estimated: based on...

In this paper we revisit the methodological aspects of the issue of spurious cycles: using the well-established clinometric data, we apply an empirical strategy to identify spurious periodicities and cross-validate the results. The analysis of cyclical fluctuations involves numerous challenges,...

The paper reviews adjustment dynamics in the EMU on the basis of estimated DSGE models for four large EA Member States (DE, FR, IT, ES). We compare the response of the four countries to identical shocks and find a particularly strong response of employment and wages in ES, a high sensitivity of...

The paper reviews adjustment dynamics in the EMU on the basis of estimated DSGE models for four large EA Member States (DE, FR, IT, ES). We compare the response of the four countries to identical shocks and find a particularly strong response of employment and wages in ES, a high sensitivity of...

Economists, observers and policy-makers often emphasize the role of sentiment as a potential driver of the business cycle. In this paper we provide three contributions to this debate. First, we critically survey the existing literature on sentiment (considering both confidence and uncertainty)...

We analyze the effect of the geographic expansion of banks across U.S. states on the co-movement of economic activity between states. Exploiting the removal of interstate banking restrictions to construct time-varying instrumental variables at the state-pair level, we find that bilateral banking...

In this paper we revisit the methodological aspects of the issue of spurious cycles: using the well-established clinometric data, we apply an empirical strategy to identify spurious periodicities and cross-validate the results. The analysis of cyclical fluctuations involves numerous challenges,...

We integrate bank and bond financing into a two-sector neoclassical growth model to examine the stabilization effect of endogenous bank leverage adjustment. We show that although bank leverage amplifies shocks, the increase of leverage to a decline in bank equity is an automatic stabilizer in...