Co-Fluctuations

This paper studies the determinants of the international synchronization of business cycles. Surprisingly, countries that trade more do not appear to have more synchronized cycles once other factors are accounted for. On the other hand, the extent of co-fluctuations increases quite robustly with the income level, so that two rich countries are unconditionally more synchronized. We develop a model where this happens because the world moves from an unstable steady state with full international specialization to a stable symmetric one. Similar countries produce similar goods and as a result experience sectoral shocks that are of equal importance. By contrast, different income levels reflect differences in production patterns, where the North produces manufactures and the South agricultural goods. Since there is no particular reason why stochastic developments in those two sectors should be correlated with one another, we should expect less cyclical comovement between a rich and a poor country. Finally, the model is consistent with the tendency for trade amongst developed countries to be mostly intra-industry.