To date, only annual information on economic activity is published for the 16 German states. In this paper, we calculate quarterly regional GDP estimates for the period between 1995 to 2021, thereby improving the regional database for Germany. The new data set will regularly be updated when...

To date, only annual information on economic activity is published for the 16 German states. In this paper, we calculate quarterly regional GDP estimates for the period between 1995 to 2020, thereby improving the regional database in Germany. The new data set will regularly be updated when...

Using newly digitized unemployment insurance claims data we construct a historical monthly unemployment series for U.S. states going back to January 1947. The constructed series are highly correlated with the Bureau of Labor Statics' state-level unemployment data, which are only available from...

This paper examines the role of local labor markets in determining how long families receive benefits from the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program. Given the current policy emphasis on devolution and reducing the AFDC caseload through employment, understanding the role of...

This paper examines the degree of correlation of EU regional employment cycles and attempts to show whether these cycles reflect changing patterns of specialisation. By focusing on the regional level and by employing three different indicators of similarity of sectoral structure, it improves on...

This paper reviews three important issues in the literature on international and intranational risk sharing. First, we establish a comprehensive set of stylized facts for consumption risk sharing within and across countries. Consistent with the findings in the literature, we find that the...

Past literature has examined the responsiveness of various economies (region, state, and metropolitan area) to changes in the U.S. business cycle. The objective of this study is to determine if spatial disaggregation to the small core city provides further insights to the co-movement of local...

We study the effects of labor mobility within a currency union suffering from nominal rigidities. When the demand shortfall in depressed region is mostly internal, migration may not help regional macroeconomic adjustment. When external demand is also at the root of the problem, migration out of...

Countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) are heterogeneous, characterized by marked differences in production and export structures, divergent levels of inflation rates and fiscal positions. These features suggest that there is a greater tendency for the transmission...

With strong historical ties, and economic linkages that have continued to grow after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Baltic and Nordic regions form a unique economic space. How interconnected are these regions, both to each other and to the rest of the world? Greater connections can help...

We exploit differences across U.S. states in terms of their exposure to trade to study the effects of changes in the exchange rate on economic activity at the business cycle frequency. We find that a depreciation in the state-specific trade-weighted real exchange rate is associated with an...

Making inferences about aggregate business cycles from regional variation alone is difficult because of economic channels and shocks that differ between regional and aggregate economies. However, we argue that regional business cycles contain valuable information that can help discipline models...

Despite its central importance in the optimal currency area literature, little is known about when and why US regional business cycles became more synchronized. We shed light on these issues by (re)constructing a monthly index of retail sales for the 12 US Federal Reserve districts from 1919 to...

This Database covers indicators of firm activity at the subnational level which spans across the regions of 27 OECD countries, with two separate datasets one for employer and the other for all firms, including non-employer firms. The indicators present a set of demographic events which follow...

We study the features of regional business cycles and growth in Japan. We find evidence of unconditional convergence over the 1955-2008 period. For the 1975-2008 period, we find evidence of convergence conditional on TFP gap, population growth, private investment rate and TFP growth. We also...

We use a novel quarterly dataset of U.S. states to examine the dynamics and determinants of relative government spending multipliers in the decade surrounding the Great Recession. We find average multipliers that are similar to those that have been reported for the decades preceding the crisis,...

A large literature following Ruhm (2000) suggests that mortality falls during recessions and rises during booms. The panel-data approach used to generate these results assumes that either there is no substantial migration response to temporary changes in local economic conditions, or that any...

There has been a well-documented retreat from marriage among less educated individuals in the U.S. and non-marital childbearing has become the norm among young mothers and mothers with low levels of education. One hypothesis is that the declining economic position of men in these populations is...

This paper examines business cycle synchronization in the European Monetary Union with a special focus on the core-periphery pattern in the aftermath of the crisis. Using a quarterly index for business cycle synchronization by Cerqueira (2013), our panel data estimates suggest that it is...

Large contractionary shocks such as the Great Recession or the sovereign debt crisis in Europe have rekindled interest in analyzing the overall patterns of business cycles. We study these patterns for Europe both at the national and the regional level. We first examine business cycles'...

This paper assesses the extent to which fiscal transfers smooth regional shocks in three large federations: the US, Canada and Australia. We find that fiscal transfers offset 4-11 percent of idiosyncratic shocks (risk-sharing) and 13-24 percent of permanent shocks (redistribution). This fiscal...

The variation in a state-level measure of local economic-policy uncertainty during the 2007-2009 recession matches the cross-sectional distribution of unemployment outcomes in this period. This relationship is robust to numerous controls for other determinants of labor market outcomes. Using...

The aim of this paper is to show the usefulness of Finite Mixture Markov Models (FMMMs) for regional analysis. FMMMs combine clustering techniques and Markov Switching models, providing a powerful methodological framework to jointly obtain business cycle datings and clusters of regions that...

We use a novel quarterly dataset of U.S. states to examine the dynamics and determinants of relative government spending multipliers in the decade surrounding the Great Recession. We find average multipliers that are similar to those that have been reported for the decades preceding the crisis,...

A large literature following Ruhm (2000) suggests that mortality falls during recessions and rises during booms. The panel-data approach used to generate these results assumes that either there is no substantial migration response to temporary changes in local economic conditions, or that any...

There has been a well-documented retreat from marriage among less educated individuals in the U.S. and non-marital childbearing has become the norm among young mothers and mothers with low levels of education. One hypothesis is that the declining economic position of men in these populations is...