It is well known that business cycles in OECD countries exhibit a remarkable degree of synchronization. Much less known is that the peak of the OECD cycle is associated with high prices of labour-intensive products and low prices of capital-intensive ones. We document this cyclical behavior of...

This paper presents a very simple model of the effects of flexible exchange rates in the transmission of business cycles. The starting point is the traditional "locomotive" effect, through exports and imports. Aside from this horizontal transmission, the intertemporal exchange rate model...

We find a strong link between currency excess returns and the relative strength of the business cycle. Buying currencies of strong economies and selling currencies of weak economies generates high returns both in the cross section and time series of countries. These returns stem primarily from...

International risk-sharing has far-reaching implications both for economic policy and for basic research in economics. When countries do not share risk, individuals in those countries experience fluctuations in their consumption levels that are undesirable and possibly unnecessary. This paper...

Recent macroeconomic experience has drawn attention to the importance of interdependence among countries through financial markets and institutions, independently of traditional trade linkages. This paper develops a model of the international transmission of shocks due to interdependent...

Countries that are more engaged in production sharing exhibit higher bilateral manufacturing output correlations. We use data on trade flows between US multinationals and their affiliates as well as trade between the United States and Mexican maquiladoras to measure production-sharing trade and...

Over the postwar, the U.S., Europe and Japan have experienced what may be thought of as medium frequency oscillations between persistent periods of robust growth and persistent periods of relative stagnation. These medium frequency movements, further, appear to bear some relation to the high...

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...

This paper develops a structural VAR model to measure how a shock to one country can affect the GDP of other countries. It uses trade linkages to estimate the multiplier effects of a shock as it is transmitted through other countries' output fluctuations. The paper introduces a new specification...

When an economic boom produces high output, employment, and investment in the United States, there is usually a simultaneous boom in other industrialized countries. But, why? Answering this question is a central goal of international macroeconomics. However, multi-country dynamic equilibrium...