The paper examines the effects of asymmetries in fiscal policy conduct upon the correlation of business cycles in the European Union. In particular the paper estimates the effects of fiscal indiscipline and dissimilarity on business cycle correlation in the period 1996-2012 using a panel of 27...

This paper examines the degree of trade integration and business cycle synchronisation between eight Balkan countries and the Euro area over the period 2000:1-2011:4. The main findings are that Slovenia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia exhibit a high level of openness relative to...

The policy response to the current European crisis has largely focused on its financial symptoms rather than on its deep economic and political causes. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate about the current architecture of the European Economic and Monetary Union. The crisis has...

The paper studies the structural convergence of the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) with the Euro area, in order to determine whether the last decade led an increase or a decrease of the gaps between these two regions. The main findings of the paper indicate that only three CEECs...

A few years after the establishment of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), large asymmetries emerged in the trade balances and the current accounts of the member-states. A divide seems to separate two groups in the euro area, one with the northern countries achieving external...

Euroization is defined as the adoption of the Euro currency by the authorities from a country outside the Euro area, as a legal currency and as an official currency, and this means that the country chooses to give up its national currency and that the national bank gives up using the monetary...

The optimum currency area theory and the economic literature settled that the convergence of the business cycles is one of the most important criteria in establishing the costs and the benefits of the adhesion to a monetary union. If the action of various types of economic shocks, respectively...