The aim of this paper is to investigate the role played by macroeconomic shocks in shaping unemployment fluctuations, both in the USA and in the Euro area, in the recent, European Monetary Union, period. The task is accomplished by estimating a VAR model which jointly considers US and European...

In the first thirteen years of EMU, monetary policy choices of the European Central Bank (ECB) in setting the short-term interest rate have followed, systematically, monetary policy decisions made by the Federal Reserve System (Fed). For, despite the presence of variable lags with respect to Fed...