Do European business cycles look like one?

Abstract

This paper analyzes if each European country presents business cycles that are similar enough to validate what some authors call the European cycle. Contrary to the majority of papers on business cycles, we concentrate on the appearance of the cycle, not on the synchronization. We provide a robust methodology for dating and characterizing business cycles and their phases and adopt the model-based cluster analysis to test the existence of an unique cluster (a common cycle) against more than one. We find evidence against a common cycle. Finally, we find no clear relation between similarities in business cycle appearance and synchronization across countries.