This paper intends to harmonize two different approaches to the analysis of the business cycle and in doing so it retrieves the stylized facts of the business cycle in Europe. We start with the `classical` approach proposed in Burns and Mitchell (1946) of dating and analyzing the business cycle;...

This paper intends to harmonize two different approaches to the analysis of the business cycle and in doing so it retrieves the stylized facts of the business cycle in Europe. We start with the “classical” approach proposed in Burns and Mitchell (1946) of dating and analyzing the business...

This paper deals with the existence and identification of a common European growth cycle. Univariate Markov switching autoregressions (MS-AR) are used for individual countries in order to detect changes in the mean growth rate of industrial production. A Markov switching vector autoregression...

This paper deals with the existence and identification of a common European Growth Cycle. It has recently been argued that the formation of a monetary union creates in itself a tendency for business cycle symmetry to emerge. If this holds for the European monetary Union and the quasi-union of...

This report provides an overview of the main competition and regulatory issues in the Spanish gas and electricity markets, setting them in the broader context of the liberalisation of the European energy market. Public policy in energy markets needs to reconcile a number of different objectives,...

An imperfectly-informed regulator needs to procure multiple units of some good (e.g., green energy, market liquidity, pollution reduction, land conservation) that can be produced with heterogeneous technologies at various costs. How should she optimally procure these units? Should she run...