Large datasets for the Euro Area and its member countries and the dynamic effects of the common monetary policy
This study investigates heterogeneous responses to common monetary policy shocks across Eurozone countries, focusing on asymmetric transmission mechanisms in prices, interest rates, real output, and equity prices. We construct and publicly release EA-MD-QD—a novel high-frequency macroeconomic database covering the Eurozone aggregate and ten member states, updated monthly/quarterly and continuously revised since January 2000 (comprising 800+ time series). Employing state-of-the-art methods—including Common Component VAR, instrumental variable estimation, and sign-restricted identification—we systematically uncover structural disparities in monetary transmission between core and peripheral countries, and demonstrate that real—not nominal—variables predominantly drive business cycle synchronization across members. Our key contributions are threefold: (i) the first integrated, high-frequency, publicly available Eurozone macrodatabase; (ii) the first empirical characterization of intra-Eurozone monetary policy transmission asymmetries; and (iii) identification of the underlying drivers of such asymmetries.