Clustering eurozone cycles

Firstly, the study draws out symmetrical subsets of 27 member countries of the European Union (EU27) countries according to their extents of business cycle symmetry with the whole of EA12, quantified by correlations of cycles between the countries’ GDP components and the EA12s GDP. The objective is to evaluate the obtained country groupings against the EA12 countries, the initial members of the euro club. This exercise is implemented using hierarchical cluster analysis for pre- and post-euro periods. As a robustness check, a principal component analysis is applied. Secondly, the analysis deploys a discriminant technique on the cluster analysis solutions to identify the GDP component whose cycle synchronicity contributes most to separation of the countries. In a nutshell, the findings suggest a significant rise in fragmentation within EU27 and within EA12 after euroization and that cycle synchronization involving the GDP component of private investment as a more important determinant to country classifications.