This study loods at the experience of Sub-Saharan Africa in dealing with commodity-price variability and discusses whether poor macroeconomic results should be attributed to the inherent difficulty of predicting commodity-price fluctuations, or, rather, to flawed internal political and fiscal...

This paper investigates the role of domestic and external factors in explaining business cycle and international trade developments in fifteen emerging market economies. Results from signrestricted VARs show that developments in real output, inflation, real exchange rates and international trade...

This paper examines the business cycle implications of increased North-South trade in financial assets. We build a quantitative general equilibrium model of North-South trade and compare the model's predictions under two asset market assumptions: a restricted setting in which asset trade is...

This paper shows that the economic activity of the industrial North and developing South move together - when the North is above its trend, the South tends to be above its trend. We refer to this phenomenon as the "North-South business cycle." The paper develops a quantitative general...

Recent empirical research finds that pairs of countries with stronger trade linkages tend to have more highly correlated business cycles. We assess whether the standard international business cycle framework can replicate this intuitive result. We employ a three-country model with transportation...

Despite its importance, the microeconomics of the international transmission of shocks is not well understood. The conventional wisdom is that relative price changes are the primary mechanism by which shocks are transmitted across borders. Yet traded-goods prices exhibit significant inertia in...

This paper investigates the transmission mechanisms of structural shocks and volatility between economies through trade links, and the effects of synchronization on business cycles. We investigate the transmission of outside structural shocks and the fluctuations that the shocks generate. We...

This paper provides a comprehensive assessment of the impact of NAFTA on growth and business cycles in Mexico. The effect of the agreement in spurring a dramatic increase in trade and financial flows between Mexico and its NAFTA partners, and its impact on Mexican economic growth and business...

This paper measures the extent to which South African economic growth is an engine of growth in sub-Saharan Africa. Results based on panel data estimation for 47 African countries over four decades suggest that South African growth has a substantial positive impact on growth in the rest of...