Is the convergence of business cycles a global or regional issue? The UK, US and Euroland

The identification of an European business cycle has been inconclusive. Yet cyclical convergence is the key consideration for those countries that wish to be members of the currency union (e.g. UK). In general, countries will vary in the components and characteristics that make up their cycles at any moment, as well as in the state of their cycle at each moment. To take this into account, we show here how to decompose a business cycle in a time-frequency framework; so that its components vary in importance and cyclical characteristics over time. We show, the inconclusive convergence results obtained so far appear because countries have some cycles in common-but diverge at others. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.