This paper investigates the time-varying correlation between the EU12-wide business cycle and the initial EU12 member-countries based on Scalar-BEKK and multivariate Riskmetrics model frameworks for the period 1980-2012. The paper provides evidence that changes in the business cycle...

This paper examines the spatial interaction of neighboring cities over their employment cycles. The cycles of neighboring cities tend to be more similar to one another than are those of non-neighboring cities, although this is due primarily to neighbors' tendency to be in the same state. In...

What matters to economic decision-making is whether the economy has become more or less predictable. People and businesses use information around them to form judgements about what might happen in the future. The rise in uncertainty might be associated with increased concern about extreme...

This paper examines the synchronization of business cycles across the G7 countries during US recessions since the 1870's. Using a dynamic measure of business cycle synchronization, results depend on the globalisation period under consideration. On average, US recessions have significantly...

We use wavelet analysis to investigate to what extent individual U.S. states' business cycles are synchronized. The results show that the U.S. states are remarkably well synchronized compared to the previous findings w.r.t. the Euro Area. There is also a strong and significant correlation...

This paper explores the impact of country size on labor market flexibility in a monetary union with a common monetary policy as conducted in EMU. I apply a Barro-Gordon framework and test its result empirically for EMU. Results confirm that small countries demand higher labor market flexibility...

Recent developments in the business cycle empirical literature for the developed economies show that there is an increasing synchronization of the cycles in the sense that cycles are of approximately equal wave length, and exhibit similar lead-lag patterns and decreasing volatility over time,...

This paper assesses the level of readiness of Romania to adopt euro, based on nominal and real convergence criteria evaluation. We used the optimal currency area criteria in order to assess the real convergence process in Romania. The main conclusion of the paper is that more progress is...

This paper investigates whether the East African Community (EAC) constitutes an optimum currency area (OCA) by estimating the degree and evolution of business cycle synchronization between the EAC countries. We also investigate whether the degree of business cycle synchronization has improved...

The Hodrick-Prescott (HP) filter is a commonly used method, particularly in potential output studies. However its suitability depends on a number of conditions. Very small open economies do not satisfy these as their macroeconomic series exhibit pronounced trends, large fluctuations and...