This paper studies the intranational business cycle – that is the set of regional (prefecture) business cycles – in Japan. One reason for choosing to examine the Japanese case is that long time series and relatively detailed data are available. A Hodrick-Prescott filter is applied to...

The changing relationships between the G-7 countries are examined through VAR models for quarterly growth, estimated over sub-periods and using a rolling data window. Trivariate models are employed, each including the US and a European (E15) aggregate. The results show that conditional...

The article reviews the case for the UK to join the Eurozone by way of presenting a review of HM Treasury's widely well-regarded "Euro Report" (2003). The review provides an opportunity to rehearse and update the elements of optimum currency area (OCA) theory. In particular, the study draws...

The paper uses quarterly GDP data for some 30 years up to and including 2001, to examine the identity and development of the European business cycle. Cycles are identified by using a band-pass filter version of the Hodrick-Prescott filter and affiliations are examined using clustering techniques...

The paper presents the text of an inaugural lecture given at the Bank of England in December 2005 in memory of John Flemming. It provides a personal view of the lessons that can be drawn about currency unions from the experience of the European Monetary Union. It argues that business cycle...

This paper aims at improving the understanding of the transmission of shocks across countries and how this transmission may have changed over time. By employing a model that allows for parameter changes across regimes, we show that transmission of shocks from the US to European countries may...

We estimate Shiller portfolio weights for OECD countries and US states. We find that the income of US federal states is derived to about 50 percent from own output, that of OECD countries to about 60 percent.This suggests that US states display considerable ’home bias at home’ and that the...