It is generally recognized that countries wanting to join a monetary union should display the optimal currency area properties. One such property is the similarity of business cycles. We therefore undertook to analyze the synchronization of business cycles between the EMU and eight new EU...

Decomposing output into trend and cyclical components is an uncertain exercise and depends on the method applied. It is an especially dubious task for countries undergoing large structural changes, such as transition countries. Despite their deficiencies, however, univariate detrending methods...

This paper shows that error correction models assuming that long-maturity forward rates are stationary outperform the random walk in out of sample forecasting at forecasting horizons mostly above one year, for US dollar exchange rates against nine industrial countries' currencies, using the...

This paper introduces a method of calculating physical capital stock figures in transition countries and derives data for Hungary. On the basis of international experience, we set investment and saving paths for future income levels. Confrontation of savings prospects of different sectors with...

Using a panel of 21 OECD countries and 40 years of annual data, we find that countries with similar government budget positions tend to have business cycles that fluctuate more closely. That is, fiscal convergence (in the form of persistently similar ratios of government surplus/deficit to GDP)...