This paper presents stylised facts about the business cycle of the euro area. The results suggest that the stylised facts for the euro area economy and the US are very similar. The magnitude of the fluctuations in consumption, investment, prices, inflation, interest rate, monetary aggregates relative to the fluctuations of GDP are very similar in the two monetary unions. There is also high synchronicity of the national cycles and the euro area aggregate cycle. This synchronicity is observed for the main GDP components as well as for interest rates and it is particularly high for the largest countries of the euro area and for countries of the core ERM. These results are not sensitive to a different aggregation method chosen to build euro area aggregates. However, we do find differences between the euro area and the member countries when looking at what variables are predicting inflation or GDP. JEL Classification: E42; E50.
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095.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Beyer, Andreas & Doornik, Jurgen A & Hendry, David F, 2001.
"Constructing Historical Euro-Zone Data,"
Economic Journal,
Royal Economic Society, vol. 111(469), pages F102-21, February.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 1998.
"Diffusion Indexes,"
NBER Working Papers
6702, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 1999.
"Forecasting Inflation,"
NBER Working Papers
7023, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
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