Over the next couple of years, the European Union will face a difficult stage, being confronted with the eventual transition to a monetary union. In the beginning of 1997, it is less clear than ever, if and when the European Monetary Union will eventually be realized, which countries will join...

Einführung -- Innovationsdynamik, Spezialisierung und Wirtschaftswachstum: Theoretische Erklärungsansätze -- Innovationsdynamik in der EU: Konvergenz oder Divergenz? -- Die Entwicklung der technologischen und wirtschaftlichen Spezialisierungen der EU-Staaten -- Der Beitrag von Innovationen...

This paper proposes an econometric framework to assess the importance of common shocks and common transmission mechanisms ingenerating international business cycles. Then we show how to decompose the cyclical effects of permanent-transitory shocks into those due to their domestic and those due...

In the workhorse model of international real business cycles, financial integration exacerbates the cycle asymmetry created by country-specific supply shocks. The prediction is identical in response to purely common shocks in the same model augmented with simple country heterogeneity (eg, where...

We study the origin of comovement in economic fluctuations across regions in India through a unique administrative dataset on plant-level sales. Regional sales exhibit a high level of comovement that can be traced to a small number of large plants located in different regions, indicating a...

To analyze the international transmission of business cycle fluctuations, we propose a new multilevel dynamic factor model with a block structure that (i) does not restrict the factors to being orthogonal and (ii) mixes data sampled at quarterly and monthly frequencies. By means of Monte Carlo...

This paper takes an otherwise standard real-business-cycle setup with government sector, and augments it with shocks to consumer confidence to study business cycle fluctuations. A surprise increase in consumer confidence generates higher utility, as the household values consumption more in...

This paper studies the generation and transmission of international cycles in a multi-country model with production and consumption interdependencies. Two sources of disturbance are considered, and three channels of propagation are compared. In the short run the contemporaneous correlation of...