In this paper we use data from 17 African nations in order to investigate the hypothesis that monetary union - represented in this case by the CFA Franc Zone - augments the extent of macroeconomic integration. The paper covers a number of dimensions of integration including the volume of...

The present paper discourses on how European integration and gradual enlargement has affected the synchronicity in business cycles in EU regions. The analysis, which is conducted on annual data at the NUTSII level, is based on the following grounds: First, it examines the degree of synchronicity...

Survey data on inflation expectations show that: (i) private sector forecasts and central bank forecasts are not fully aligned and (ii) private sector forecasters disagree about inflation expectations. To reconcile these two facts we introduce dispersed information in a New Keynesian model,...

The monetary transmission mechanism plays an important role in studying the effects of monetary policy on the real side of the economy. At least since Chari et al. (2000) it is generally accepted that new keynesian models of the business cycle display a persistence problem. In this paper, we...

In this study I review the main scientific contributions of Minsky and other scholars to the financial instability and crisis issues, and the role of institutions in modeling the medium and long financial and business waves. The topics developed in this paper are the following: the relationships...

We propose the analysis of the dynamics of the standard deviation of business cycles across euro area countries in order to evaluate the patterns of cyclical convergence in the European Monetary Union for the period 1960-2008. We identify significant business cycle divergence taking place in the...