International co-movements in recessions

Moritz Roth

No 1804, Working Papers from Banco de España

Abstract: Business cycle correlations are state-dependent and higher in recessions than in expansions. In this paper, I suggest a mechanism to explain why this is the case. For this purpose, I build an international real business cycle model with occasionally binding constraints on capacity utilization which can account for state-dependent cross-country correlations in GDP growth rates. The intuition is that firms can only use their machines up to a capacity ceiling. Therefore, in booms the growth of an individual economy can be dampened when the economy hits its capacity constraint. This creates an asymmetry that can spill-over to other economies, thereby creating state-dependent cross-country correlations in GDP growth rates. Empirically, I successfully test for the presence of capacity constraints using data from the G7 advanced economies in a Bayesian threshold autoregressive (T-VAR) model. This finding supports capacity constraints as a prominent transmission channel of cross-country GDP asymmetries in recessions compared to expansions.

Keywords: international business cycles; business cycle asymmetries; GDP co-movement; capacity constraints; occasionally binding constraints (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E32 E60 F41 F44 F47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 76 pages
Date: 2018-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge, nep-mac and nep-opm
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bde:wpaper:1804

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