Over the period 1972-1986, the correlations of GDP, employment and investment between the United States and an aggregate of Europe, Canada and Japan were respectively 0.76, 0.66, and 0.63. For the period 1986 to 2000 the same correlations were much lower: 0.26, 0.03 and -0.07 (real...

It has long been recognized that business cycle comovement is greater between countries that trade intensively with one another. Surprisingly, no one has previously examined the relationship between trade intensity and comovement of shocks to the trend level of output. Contrary to the result for...

Can financial integration, particularly the cross-border investments of multinational firms, help explain the synchronization of business cycles? This paper presents evidence on the comovement of returns and investment within U.S. multinational firms to address this question. These firms...

We analyze the impact of financial globalization on business cycle synchronization utilizing a proprietary database on banks' international exposure for industrialized countries during 1978- 2006. Theory makes ambiguous predictions and identification has been elusive due to lack of bilateral...

This paper shows that the EMU has not affected historical characteristics of member countries' business cycles and their cross-correlations. Member countries which had similar levels of GDP per-capita in the seventies have also experienced similar business cycles since then and no significant...

In this paper, we document evidence on the synchronization of business cycles across 16 countries over the past century and a quarter, demarcated into four exchange rate regimes. We find using three different methodologies that there is a secular trend towards increased synchronization for much...

The volatility of economic activity in most G7 economies has moderated over the past forty years. Also, despite large increases in trade and openness, G7 business cycles have not become more synchronized. After documenting these twin facts, we interpret G7 output data using a structural VAR that...