Euro Area Business Cycle Network (EABCN) conference

5-6 December 2003 in Frankfurt, hosted by the European Central Bank
CALL FOR PAPERS - deadline 19 September 2003

Organised by the Scientific Committee of the EABCN:
Lucrezia Reichlin (ECARES, Université Libre de Bruxelles and CEPR), Carlo Favero (IGIER, Università Bocconi and CEPR), Gabriel Perez (Banco de España) and Jérôme Henry (ECB)

The research departments of the Eurosystem and the Bank of England, in co-operation with the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), have launched the Euro Area Business Cycle Network for the study of the empirical aspects of the euro area business cycle.

The Network plans to hold its first conference in December 2003, following on from its first workshop, held in March in Madrid. The workshop focused on the changing characteristics of the world business cycle and the role of the euro area in this context. It looked at new empirical results, based on new methods, which confirmed the existence of changing patterns. The conference will discuss the structural interpretation of these changes. It will concentrate on two themes.

The first theme will be "shocks". Can we identify the main sources of exogenous shocks in the G7 economies and in the euro area? In all these economies, output volatility seems to have decreased since the 1980s. Is this explained by changes in the nature of shocks, or by changes in economic policies and structures, as reflected in propagation mechanisms?

The second theme will be "model validation". Structural interpretation requires theory as well as empirical analysis. Recently, the literature has introduced new ideas on model validation that try to link data and theory, taking into account uncertainty in both. What do these methods tell us about theory and empirics that is relevant for an understanding of the euro area business cycle? Can these methods be used for both policy evaluation and forecasting? How can models derived from alternative frameworks possibly leading to conflicting results be comparatively assessed?

Travel and accommodation expenses will be covered for all participants from academic institutions according to the usual CEPR travel guidelines. Costs will not be covered for central bank participants. Please indicate on your reply form whether you will cover your own travel costs or will require funding from CEPR.

Please complete the accompanying reply form, (  pdf 24 kB, en ) indicating whether you wish to present a paper or would be willing to act as a discussant, and return it to Elodie Ruelleux at CEPR by e-mail eruelleux@cepr.org or fax +44 20 78 78 29 99. All applications must reach Elodie by 19 September 2003. If you would like to present a paper please include a copy of it or a one-page abstract with your reply form. We will confirm your participation in October 2003. back to top