Is the euro area getting closer with regard to business cycles? The study investigates the linkage between business cycle convergence and financial portfolio choice for a panel of 18 European countries. For this purpose an index is constructed which measures the similarity of investment...

Most EU member states will adopt fiscal rules that refer to cyclically-adjusted borrowing limits. Under the standard cyclical adjustment procedure, trend increases in public debt based on cyclical components are prevented if the real-time output gaps used to calculate cyclical components balance...