IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cca/wpaper/729.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Eurozone Economic Integration: Historical Developments and New Challenges Ahead

Author

Listed:
  • Fabio C. Bagliano
  • Claudio Morana

Abstract

The paper yields a structural account of economic integration in the Eurozone from its inception to post-pandemic developments by considering a broad range of convergence measures. We introduce a novel FAVAR framework, extracting the structural shocks driving the Eurozone business and financial cycles directly from the cyclical components they generate. Productivity advancements have been the critical trend convergence factor, shaping long swings in real, labor market, and financial dispersion. Subdued cost-push shocks were the key driver of Eurozone nominal and competitiveness convergence throughout 2015 but have become an all-rounded divergence force since then. Fiscal discipline imposed by the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) increased real and financial divergence during all recessionary episodes, while the ECB expansionary monetary policy was a convergence factor. The SGP suspension during the recent pandemic recession and recovery has partially counteracted divergence pressures. Looking forward, convergence will crucially depend on how productivity dynamics and economic growth will fend off further unfavorable cost-push developments, which might become pervasive in a deglobalization-driven new macroeconomic regime.

Suggested Citation

  • Fabio C. Bagliano & Claudio Morana, 2024. "Eurozone Economic Integration: Historical Developments and New Challenges Ahead," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 729 JEL Classification: E, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    • Handle: RePEc:cca:wpaper:729
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.carloalberto.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/729-2.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Morana, Claudio, 2024. "A new macro-financial condition index for the euro area," Econometrics and Statistics, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 64-87.
    2. Ángel Estrada & Jordi Galí & David López-Salido, 2013. "Patterns of Convergence and Divergence in the Euro Area," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 61(4), pages 601-630, December.
    3. Michael Ehrmann & Marcel Fratzscher & Refet S Güürkaynak & Eric T Swanson, 2011. "Convergence and Anchoring of Yield Curves in the Euro Area," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(1), pages 350-364, February.
    4. Hodrick, Robert J & Prescott, Edward C, 1997. "Postwar U.S. Business Cycles: An Empirical Investigation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 29(1), pages 1-16, February.
    5. Leonor Coutinho & Mirko Licchett, 2023. "Inflation Differentials in the Euro Area at the Time of High Energy Prices," European Economy - Discussion Papers 197, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    6. Hoffmann, Peter & Kremer, Manfred & Zaharia, Sonia, 2020. "Financial integration in Europe through the lens of composite indicators," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).
    7. Paul Beaudry & Dana Galizia & Franck Portier, 2020. "Putting the Cycle Back into Business Cycle Analysis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(1), pages 1-47, January.
    8. Garcia-de-Andoain, Carlos & Kremer, Manfred, 2017. "Beyond spreads: Measuring sovereign market stress in the euro area," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 153-156.
    9. Kremer, Manfred & Lo Duca, Marco & Holló, Dániel, 2012. "CISS - a composite indicator of systemic stress in the financial system," Working Paper Series 1426, European Central Bank.
    10. Cassola, Nuno & Morana, Claudio, 2012. "Euro money market spreads during the 2007–? financial crisis," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 548-557.
    11. repec:ecb:ecbwps:20111426 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Mr. Jeffrey R. Franks & Ms. Bergljot B Barkbu & Mr. Rodolphe Blavy & William Oman & Hanni Schoelermann, 2018. "Economic Convergence in the Euro Area: Coming Together or Drifting Apart?," IMF Working Papers 2018/010, International Monetary Fund.
    13. Ben S. Bernanke & Jean Boivin & Piotr Eliasz, 2005. "Measuring the Effects of Monetary Policy: A Factor-Augmented Vector Autoregressive (FAVAR) Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(1), pages 387-422.
    14. Jushan Bai & Serena Ng, 2004. "A PANIC Attack on Unit Roots and Cointegration," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(4), pages 1127-1177, July.
    15. Claudio Morana, 2014. "New insights on the US OIS spreads term structure during the recent financial turmoil," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(5), pages 291-317, March.
    16. Daniel Gros, 2013. "Foreign debt versus domestic debt in the euro area," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 29(3), pages 502-517, AUTUMN.
    17. Fabio C. Bagliano & Claudio Morana, 2011. "The Effects of the US Economic and Financial Crises on Euro Area Convergence," Chapters, in: Wim Meeusen (ed.), The Economic Crisis and European Integration, chapter 7, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    18. Claudio Borio, 2014. "The financial cycle and macroeconomics: what have we learned and what are the policy implications?," Chapters, in: Ewald Nowotny & Doris Ritzberger-Grünwald & Peter Backé (ed.), Financial Cycles and the Real Economy, chapter 2, pages 10-35, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    19. repec:rim:rimwps:22-14 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Kunovac, Davor & Palenzuela, Diego Rodriguez & Sun, Yiqiao, 2022. "A new optimum currency area index for the euro area," Working Paper Series 2730, European Central Bank.
    21. Borio, Claudio, 2014. "The financial cycle and macroeconomics: What have we learnt?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 182-198.
    22. Jørgensen, Peter L. & Ravn, Søren H., 2022. "The inflation response to government spending shocks: A fiscal price puzzle?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    23. Jushan Bai & Peng Wang, 2015. "Identification and Bayesian Estimation of Dynamic Factor Models," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(2), pages 221-240, April.
    24. Duprey, Thibaut & Klaus, Benjamin & Peltonen, Tuomas, 2017. "Dating systemic financial stress episodes in the EU countries," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 30-56.
    25. Claudio Borio & Mathias Drehmann & Dora Xia Author-X-Name_First: Dora, 2019. "Predicting recessions: financial cycle versus term spread," BIS Working Papers 818, Bank for International Settlements.
    26. Diaz del Hoyo, Juan Luis & Dorrucci, Ettore & Heinz, Frigyes Ferdinand & Muzikarova, Sona, 2017. "Real convergence in the euro area: a long-term perspective," Occasional Paper Series 203, European Central Bank.
    27. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    28. Ulrich K. Müller & Mark W. Watson, 2018. "Long†Run Covariability," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 86(3), pages 775-804, May.
    29. De Grauwe, Paul, 2016. "The legacy of the Eurozone crisis and how to overcome it," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 39(PB), pages 147-155.
    30. Francesco Paolo Mongelli, 2008. "European Economic and Monetary Integration, and the Optimum Currency Area Theory," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 302, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    31. Jushan Bai, 2003. "Inferential Theory for Factor Models of Large Dimensions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(1), pages 135-171, January.
    32. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1993. "Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-56, February.
    33. Kristoffer Herland Hellton & Magne Thoresen, 2014. "The Impact of Measurement Error on Principal Component Analysis," Scandinavian Journal of Statistics, Danish Society for Theoretical Statistics;Finnish Statistical Society;Norwegian Statistical Association;Swedish Statistical Association, vol. 41(4), pages 1051-1063, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Paglialunga, Elena & Resce, Giuliano & Zanoni, Angela, 2025. "Predicting Regional Unemployment in the EU," Economics & Statistics Discussion Papers esdp25101, University of Molise, Department of Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:rim:rimwps:21-07 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Morana, Claudio, 2024. "A new macro-financial condition index for the euro area," Econometrics and Statistics, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 64-87.
    3. repec:rim:rimwps:23-14 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. repec:rim:rimwps:22-14 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Jursa, Lukáš & Janků, Jan, 2025. "From the core to the European periphery: Spillover effects of financial cycles," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    6. Duprey, Thibaut & Klaus, Benjamin, 2022. "Early warning or too late? A (pseudo-)real-time identification of leading indicators of financial stress," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    7. Schüler, Yves S. & Hiebert, Paul P. & Peltonen, Tuomas A., 2020. "Financial cycles: Characterisation and real-time measurement," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    8. Varga, Katalin & Szendrei, Tibor, 2025. "Non-stationary financial risk factors and macroeconomic vulnerability for the UK," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    9. Omar Chafik, 2020. "The amplifier/divider mechanism of the financial cycle," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 363-380, May.
    10. Matteo Barigozzi & Claudio Lissona & Matteo Luciani, 2024. "Measuring the Euro Area Output Gap," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2024-099, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    11. Cheng, Mingmian & Liao, Yuan & Yang, Xiye, 2023. "Uniform predictive inference for factor models with instrumental and idiosyncratic betas," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 237(2).
    12. Herwartz, Helmut & Ochsner, Christian & Rohloff, Hannes, 2020. "The credit composition of global liquidity," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 409, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    13. Duprey, Thibaut & Klaus, Benjamin, 2017. "How to predict financial stress? An assessment of Markov switching models," Working Paper Series 2057, European Central Bank.
    14. Strohsal, Till & Proaño, Christian R. & Wolters, Jürgen, 2019. "Characterizing the financial cycle: Evidence from a frequency domain analysis," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 568-591.
    15. Smets, Frank & Beyer, Robert C. M., 2015. "Labour market adjustments in Europe and the US: How different?," Working Paper Series 1767, European Central Bank.
    16. Layal MansourIshrakieh & Leila Dagher & Sadika El Hariri, 2020. "A financial stress index for a highly dollarized developing country : The case of Lebanon," Central Bank Review, Research and Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, vol. 20(2), pages 43-52.
    17. Claudio, Morana, 2015. "The US$/€ exchange rate: Structural modeling and forecasting during the recent financial crises," Working Papers 321, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics, revised 28 Dec 2015.
    18. Glocker, Christian & Sestieri, Giulia & Towbin, Pascal, 2019. "Time-varying government spending multipliers in the UK," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 180-197.
    19. CHAFIK, Omar, 2018. "Financial cycle and conduct of monetary policy: theory and empirical evidence," MPRA Paper 88995, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Christian Fieberg & Gerrit Liedtke & Thorsten Poddig, 2025. "Recurrent double-conditional factor model," OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V., vol. 47(1), pages 205-254, March.
    21. Claudio Morana, 2014. "Factor Vector Autoregressive Estimation of Heteroskedastic Persistent and Non Persistent Processes Subject to Structural Breaks," Working Papers 273, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics, revised May 2014.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • E30 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • E50 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - General
    • C32 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes; State Space Models

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cca:wpaper:729. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Giovanni Bert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fccaait.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.