Eurozone cycles: An analysis of phase synchronization.

This paper analyses synchronization, both across and between business and financial cycles (growth and classical) in a subset of 10 countries representative of the Economic and Monetary Union. Employing an extended data set from 1960 to 2013, we find evidence of synchronization across financial cycles. In case of business cycles, we find contrasting results: There is significant synchronization across growth cycles but no evidence of a common classical cycle. This confirms, first, that economic and financial variables in the Economic and Monetary Union behave differently and, second, that synchronization in business cycles arises from synchronized deviations from the trend, but the underlying macroeconomic fundamentals are not in synch. Furthermore, we adopt a novel approach to break down our full sample period into smaller subperiods to follow the evolution of synchronization over time. Our results highlight the role played by the monetary union in further increasing macroeconomic divergences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]