This paper examines the monetary transmission mechanism in the euro area for the period of single monetary policy using factor-augmented vector autoregressive (FAVAR) techniques. The contributions of the paper are fourfold. First, a novel dataset consisting of 120 disaggregated macroeconomic time series spanning the period 1999:M1 through 2011:M12 is gathered for the euro area as an aggregate.
This paper uses a data-set including time series data on macroeconomic variables, loans, deposits and interest rates for the euro area in order to study the features of financial intermediation over the business cycle.
This paper describes how we constructed a real-time database for the euro area covering more than 200 series regularly published in the European Central Bank Monthly Bulletin, as made available ahead of publication to the Governing Council members before their first meeting of the month.
This paper shows that the EMU has not affected historical characteristics of member countries' business cycles and their cross-correlations. Member countries which had similar levels of GDP per-capita in the seventies have also experienced similar business cycles since then and no significant change associated with the EMU can be detected.
