Given the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and several intra-Asian agreements, the EU is focused on large-sized free trade agreements (FTAs) to avoid trade diversion and to maintain Europe's ability to set the trade policy agenda. The EU is now negotiating with all TPP countries except Australia,...

This paper first reviews a number of stylised facts concerning OECD country business cycles over the past four decades. In general, the amplitude of business cycles has fallen, driven mainly by declining fluctuations of domestic demand. As a result, international divergencies of cyclical...

Schätzungen des Produktionspotenzials und der Produktionslücke einer Volkswirtschaft sind von großer Bedeutung für die Wirtschaftspolitik. Sie spielen eine wesentliche Rolle für den Europäischen Stabilitäts- und Wachstumspakt und für die im Grundgesetz verankerte Schuldenbremse. In der...

I present empirical results on the contribution of three key drivers of inflation in Denmark: an inflation trend anchored by inflation expectations; the Danish business cycle; and an energy price cycle. All three drivers contribute significantly to the development of inflation and explain most of...

Overall, the paper underlines the difficulties in spelling out the transmission and the final effects of external shocks on the euro area, and highlights the complexity of the various direct and indirect mechanisms. We describe the main channels by which potential spillovers from external...

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 f irst focuses on...

International commodity prices and capital inflows to developing countries are increasingly synchronized, subjecting commodity-dependent economies to double boom-bust cycles. On the one hand, there are a number of common monetary factors, notably international interest rates and the exchange...