Business Cycle Comovement in the G-7: Common Shocks or Common Transmission Mechanisms?
Posted: 27 Mar 2007 Last revised: 9 Jun 2013
Date Written: May 11, 2010
Abstract
What are the sources of macroeconomic comovement among G-7 countries? Two main candidate explanations may be singled out: common shocks and common transmission mechanisms. In the paper it is shown that they are complementary, rather than alternative, explanations. By means of a large-scale factor vector autoregressive (FVAR) model, allowing for full economic and statistical identification of all global and idiosyncratic shocks, it is found that both common disturbances and common transmission mechanisms of global and country-specific shocks account for business cycle comovement in the G-7 countries. Moreover, spillover effects of foreign idiosyncratic disturbances seem to be a less important factor than the common transmission of global or domestic shocks in the determination of international macroeconomic comovements.
Keywords: business cycle comovement, factor vector autoregressive model, transmission mechanisms.
JEL Classification: C32, E32
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation