The literature has widely discussed the role of financial and economic uncertainty shocks for the macroeconomy. However, it has turned out to be difficult to isolate these shocks from financial market indicators and uncertainty proxies because any identifying restriction on their response...

This paper assesses the role of financial variables in real economic fluctuations, in view of analysing the link between financial cycles and business cycles at the global level. A Global VAR modelling approach, which has been proved suitable for modelling country or regional linkages, is used...