SYNCHRONICITY AND SIMILARITY OF BUSINESS CYCLES; CROATIA VIS À VIS NEW EMU COUNTRIES

The introduction of the euro for Croatian citizens meant the abandonment of the deutsche mark, a reliable currency, which had been used for a long time for comparison purposes and savings. Today, Croatia is a small, opened, indebted and highly euroised country, in which frequently mentioned introduction of euro is seen as a solution that could improve country’s economic position. The question of a common monetary policy is closely related to the issue of business cycle coherence between the members of such an area. By analyzing two measures of business cycle coherence, namely synchronicity and similarity, between Croatia and new EMU members, we want to reconcile with vast empirical evidence supporting the hypothesis that monetary integration process results from a greater business cycle convergence and leads to an optimal currency area which finally leads to greater economic welfare in each of the member countries. Estimations are based on deviation cycle approach. Results in general indicate relatively similar cycle dynamics across the observed variables, suggesting that Croatia satisfies this selective criterion for its inclusion into the monetary union. Nonetheless, monetary integration is far more complicated issue, hence it requires further scientific verification and conceptualization