Germany and the European Business Cycle

Download or read book Germany and the European Business Cycle written by and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper studies the role of the German economy for the existence of the so called European business cycle, a term referring to the regularly observed synchronization of the national business cycles in Europe. Using a three-country general equilibrium model, we are able to simulate impulse response functions mimicking the important features observed in the data. Focusing on the importance of shocks affecting the German GDP we show that trade-related transmission from Germany to the other European economies is only of minor importance for the synchronization of national business cycles. On the contrary, our findings suggest that the influence of common shocks and of technology spillovers accounts for most of the parallels in economic performance. -- European business cycle ; Transmission ; Open economy macroeconomics ; Real business cycles