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This paper reexamines the relationship between trade integration and business cycle synchronization (BCS) using new value-added trade data for 63 advanced and emerging economies during 1995–2012. In a panel framework, we identify a strong positive impact of trade intensity on BCS—conditional on various controls, global common shocks and country-pair heterogeneity—that is absent when gross trade data are used. That effect is bigger in crisis times, pointing to trade as an important crisis propagation mechanism. Bilateral intra-industry trade and trade specialization correlation also appear to increase co-movement, indicating that not only the intensity but also the type of trade matters. Finally, we show that dependence on Chinese final demand in value-added terms amplifies the international spillovers and synchronizing impact of growth shocks in China.
Abstract: In early January 2003, the United States and Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua launched official negotiations for the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), a treaty that would expand NAFTA-style trade barrier reductions to Central America. With deeper trade integration between Central America and the United States, it is expected that there will be closer links in business cycles between Central American countries and the United States. The paper finds a relatively low degree of business cycle synchronization within Central America as well as between Central America and the United States. The business cycle synchronization is expected to increase only modestly with further trade expansion, making the coordination of macroeconomic policies within CAFTA somewhat less of a priority.
Deeper trade integration between Central America and the United States, as envisaged under the Central American Free Trade Agreement, is likely to lead to closer links between Central American and U.S. business cycles. This article assesses the degree of business cycle synchronization between Central America and the United States-relevant not only for a better understanding of the influence of important trading partners on the business cycle fluctuations in the domestic economy but for evaluating the costs and benefits of macroeconomic coordination.
This paper assesses the strength of business cycle synchronization between 1950 and 2014 in a sample of 21 countries using a new quarterly dataset based on IMF archival data. Contrary to the common wisdom, we find that the globalization period is not associated with more output synchronization at the global level. The world business cycle was as strong during Bretton Woods (1950-1971) than during the Globalization period (1984-2006). Although globalization did not affect the average level of co-movement, trade and financial integration strongly affect the way countries co-move with the rest of the world. We find that financial integration de-synchronizes national outputs from the world cycle, although the magnitude of this effect depends crucially on the type of shocks hitting the world economy. This de-synchronizing effect has offset the synchronizing impact of other forces, such as increased trade integration.
This paper examines the impact of rising trade and financial integration on international business cycle comovement among a large group of industrial and developing countries. The results provide at best limited support for the conventional wisdom that globalization has increased the degree of synchronization of business cycles. The evidence that trade and financial integration enhance global spillovers of macroeconomic fluctuations is stronger for industrial countries. One striking result is that, on average, cross-country consumption correlations have not increased in the 1990s, precisely when financial integration would have been expected to result in better risk-sharing opportunities, especially for developing countries.
The paper investigates the determinants of business cycles synchronization across regions. It uses both international and intranational data to evaluate the linkages between trade in goods, trade in financial assets, specialization and business cycles synchronization using a system of simultaneous equations. The results are as follows: (i) Simultaneity is important, as both trade and financial openness have a direct and an indirect effect on cycle synchronization. (ii) A variety of alternative measures of financial integration suggest that regions with strong financial links are significantly more synchronized, though they are also more specialized. (iii) Specialization patterns have a sizable effect on business cycles, beyond their reflection of intra-industry trade, and of openness to goods and assets trade. (iv) The estimated role of trade is in line with existing models once intra-industry trade is controlled for. The results relate to a recent strand of international business cycle models with incomplete markets and transport costs, and, on the empirical side, point to an important omission in the usual criteria defining an optimal currency area, namely specialization patterns.