International Real Business Cycles among Heterogeneous Countries

Business cycle statistics differ widely across countries, especially for trade-related variables. Part of these variations relates to the size of the economies and to their distance from each other. This paper asks whether a three-country model is able to display the marked diversity of business cycle statistics observed across countries. The model is calibrated to two specific examples with Canada and Switzerland. Our findings are that most of the diversity of the business cycle can be accounted for by size and distance, and that trade is not a strong channel of diffusion of cycles. This paper is available at ftp://crefe.dse.uqam.ca/pub/cahiers/cah38.ps The whole WP list is at http://www.er.uqam.ca/nobel/crefe/cahiers.html