BUSINESS CYCLE SYNCHRONIZATION BETWEEN THE CEEC AND THE EURO-AREA: EVIDENCE FROM THRESHOLD SEEMINGLY UNRELATED REGRESSIONS

This paper re-examines the issue of business cycle synchronization between the Central and East European countries (CEECs) and the Euro-area using threshold seemingly unrelated regressions. This new technique is useful in two ways. First, it takes into account contemporaneous linkages among the CEECs as well as between the CEECs and the Euro-area. Second, it captures business cycle regimes for the CEECs, which are driven by the Euro-area cycle. The methodology is applied to the three largest CEECs: Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. The results show that while Hungary has very similar business cycle regimes to the Euro-area, the Czech Republic and particularly Poland are less synchronized.