This paper looks at the synchronisation of product per capita in Portuguese regions at a disaggregated level over the period 1988-2010. Furthermore, it examines the volatility of the regional cycles by calculating dispersion measures. As a whole, results indicate that in Portugal, despite the...

This paper explores the relationship between obesity and economic conditions in Finland, using individual microdata from 1978 to 2002. The results reveal that an improvement in regional economic conditions measured by the employment-to-population ratio produces a decrease in obesity over the...

An important feature of the world economy is the close global and regional integration due to strong trade and investment relations among countries. The high degree of integration between countries is likely to give rise to business cycle synchronisation in which case shocks will spillover from...

This paper explores the connection between alcohol mortality, drinking behaviour and macroeconomic fluctuations in Finland by using both aggregate and micro-level data during the past few decades. The results from the aggregate data reveal that an improvement in regional economic conditions...

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...

We study how total factor productivity (TFP), energy prices, and the Great Moderation are linked. First we estimate a joint stochastic process for the energy price and TFP and establish that until the second quarter of 1982, energy prices negatively affected productivity. This spillover has...

In this paper, we perform an empirical comparison of Italian and US business cycles. After filtering the time series of the main macroeconomic variables of the two countries, through an approximate bandpass filter, we analyze the cross-correlations between each filtered variable and the filtered...

The authors use first differenced logged quarterly series for the GDP of 29 countries and the euro area to assess the need to use nonlinear models to describe business cycle dynamic behaviour. Their approach is model (estimation)-free, based on testing only. The authors aim to maximize power to...

To date, there has been little investigation of the impact of seasonal adjustment on the detection of business cycle expansion and recession regimes. We study this question both analytically and through Monte Carlo simulations. Analytically, we view the occurrence of a single business cycle...

This paper fits hidden Markov switching models to New Zealand GDP data. A primary objective is to better understand the utility of these methods for modelling growth and volatility regimes present in the New Zealand data and their interaction. Properties of the models are developed together with...