Determinants of Business Cycle Synchronization in East Asia: An Extreme Bound Analysis

We investigate the determinants of business cycle synchronization in East Asia by testing the robustness of the potential candidates, using the technique of Extreme Bound Analysis in an OLS regression framework with Newey-West correction for heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation. We find that trade openness and intra-industry trade are major channels of business cycle synchronization. Although the similarity of monetary policies is statistically correlated with degree synchronization, we are unsure whether the former causes the latter or vise versa. The findings are probably good news to the proponents of the prospective currency union. If the trend of increasing openness and bilateral intra-industry trade continues in East Asia, it is expected that the costs of forming a currency union would diminish as business cycles become more synchronized.