The past two decades have seen substantial deregulation in the financial sectors of most OECD countries. The main motivation was to improve efficiency within the financial system, but the macroeconomic implications might go beyond this objective with impacts on the business cycle and the...

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we try to assess to what extent the transmission mechanisms are different across Europe. We concentrate on Europe's four biggest economies: France, Germany, Italy and U.K. Second, we seek to evaluate whether the building of Europe (through the Single...