This paper applies the Phillips and Sul (2007) method to test for convergence in stock returns to an extensive dataset including monthly stock price indices for five EU countries (Germany, France, the Netherlands, Ireland and the UK) as well as the US over the period 1973-2008. We carry out the...

The appropriate design of monetary policy in integrated financial markets is one of the most challenging areas for central banks. One hot topic is whether the rise in liquidity in recent years has contributed to the formation of price bubbles in asset markets. If strong linkages exist, the...

The conditions under which European monetary policy is likely to be conducted are investigated by means of multi-variate time series modelling using aggregated data of all eleven European Monetary Union member states. A cointegration analysis identifies two stable long-run relationships, one of...

A couple of recent papers have shifted the focus towards disagreement of professional forecasters. When dealing with survey data that is sampled at a frequency higher than annual and that includes only fixed event forecasts, e.g. expectation of average annual growth rates measures of...

In this paper we present an empirically stable euro area money demand model. Using a sample period until 2009:2 shows that the current financial and economic crisis that started in 2007 does not appear to have any noticeable impact on the stability of the euro area money demand function. We also...

This paper uses long-range dependence techniques to analyse two important features of the US Federal Funds effective rate, namely its persistence and cyclical behaviour. It examines annual, monthly, bi-weekly and weekly data, from 1954 until 2010. Two models are considered. One is based on an...

This paper adopts a flexible framework to assess both short- and long-run business cycle linkages between six Latin American (LA) countries and the four largest economies in the world (namely the US, the Euro area, Japan and China) over the period 1980:I-2011:IV. The result indicate that within...

This paper analyses the Nairu in the Euro Area and the influence that monetary policy had on its development. Using the Kalman-filter technique we find that the Nairu has varied considerably since the early seventies. The Kalman-filter technique is applied here for the first time using explicit...

Inflation differentials in the Euro area are mainly due to a sustained divergence of wage developments across the Euro area, and narrower differences in labour productivity growth (Alvarez et al., 2006). We investigate convergence of inflation using unit labour cost (ULC) growth and applying...

Using unit labor cost (ULC) data from Euro area countries as well as US States and German L¨ander we investigate inflation convergence using different approaches, namely panel unit root tests, cointegration tests and error-correction models. All in all we cannot reject convergence of ULC growth...