Timely updates of business cycle fluctuations-commonly represented by movements in the output gap-help policymakers make informed decisions on the appropriate course of action. Unfortunately, business cycle assessments often suffer from lags in actual gross domestic product data releases. This...

Using surveys of households across thirteen countries, we study how much individuals would be willing to pay to eliminate business cycles. These direct estimates are much higher than traditional measures following Lucas (2003): on average, households would be prepared to sacrifice around 5-6% of...

This special topic investigates the extent to which selling price expectations (SPE) from the harmonised EU programme of business surveys contain leading information for forecasting short-term developments in the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP). The analysis is based on a...

We study the implications of forging stronger political ties with the US on the sensitivities of stock returns around the world to a global common factor - the global financial cycle. Using voting patterns at the United Nations as a measure of political ties with the US along with various...

We investigate the determinants of the performance of emerging markets (EMs) during five United States (US) Federal Reserve monetary tightening and easing cycles from 2004 to 2023. We study how macroeconomic and institutional conditions of an EM at the beginning of a cycle explain EM resilience...

The monitoring and analysis of the business cycle is a central element of inputs to monetary policy decision-making. This report contributes to the analysis of business cycles in the euro area in three dimensions. First, in terms of business cycle dating, it proposes automated procedures to...

We document changes to the pattern of technology shocks and their propagation in post-war U.S. data. Using an agnostic identification procedure, we show that the dominant shock driving total factor productivity (TFP) is akin to a diffusion or news shock and that shock transmission has changed...

We empirically examine U.S. monetary policy spillovers to the Middle East and Central Asia (ME & CA) region by decomposing U.S. interest rates changes into two orthogonal shocks: the pure monetary policy shock and the information news shock. Using a sample of 16 ME & CA countries, we find that...

Using Russia as a case study and a global VAR model as a methodological tool, we analyze how heightened geopolitical risk shocks propagate across advanced economies and quantify the economic effects of these events. The global VAR impulse response functions in response to the skyrocketing...

Using Russia as a case study and a global VAR model as a methodological tool, we analyze how heightened geopolitical risk shocks propagate across advanced economies and quantify the economic effects of these events. The global VAR impulse response functions in response to the skyrocketing...

We compute a GVAR to estimate the fiscal spillovers on output, consumption, investment, employment, and income, from 2002Q1 to 2021Q4, with 16 Euro Area (EA) countries. We found that a budget balance expansionary shock in Germany would generate positive spillovers on output and employment....

The global economy is facing increased economic policy uncertainty in a phase of already moderate momentum. The announcements made by the incoming US administration are the main reason for this. However, it is unclear what measures will actually be taken. This forecast is based on the assumption...

This article examines the effects of monetary integration on the synchronization of the business cycle within ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) and contributes to the economic literature dealing with these aspects. First, the indicators of de facto and de jure central bank...

We study the statistical relationship between the world business cycle and the global temperature cycle. To amplify the signal-to-noise ratio, we estimate a two-state latent dynamic process from the original data using the endogenous regime-switching methodology. Subsequently, we apply a...

The study analyzed the extent of financial cycle synchronization, as represented by the Aggregate Financial Cycle and the Credit and Housing Cycle, in South Africa from 1975q1 to 2023q4 using the Dynamic Conditional Correlation model and the Vector Erro Correction Mechanism. Financial cycles are...

Business cycles tend to comove across countries. However, standard models that attribute comovement to propagation of exogenous shocks struggle to generate a level of co-movement that is as high as in the data. In this paper, we consider models that produce business cycles endogenously, through...

To date, only annual information on economic activity is published for the 16 German states. In this paper, we calculate quarterly regional GDP estimates for the period between 1995 to 2021, thereby improving the regional database for Germany. The new data set will regularly be updated when...

We develop a new dynamic factor model to jointly characterize global macroeconomic and financial cycles and the spillovers between them. The model decomposes macroeconomic cycles into the part driven by global and country-specific macro factors and the part driven by spillovers from financial...

This paper examines how bilateral economic linkages shape consumption synchronization across economies. Using state-level data from the US, we find that the degree of bilateral consumption risk sharing decreases with geographic distance. To explain this novel fact, we develop an open economy...