By force of demand: Explaining cyclical fluctuations of international trade and government spending

Mingming Jiang

Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 2016, vol. 69, issue C, 249-267

Abstract: This paper explores the role of demand shocks, as an alternative to productivity shocks, in driving both domestic and international business cycles within the international real business cycle (IRBC) framework. In addition to those well-documented domestic business cycle fluctuations (e.g., the volatility and cyclicality of output, consumption, investment, labor hours, and labor productivity) and international business cycle properties (e.g., the countercyclical net export and the comovement puzzle), this paper focuses on two additional stylized facts in the industrialized countries: the procyclical trade openness (the GDP fraction of trade volume) and the countercyclical government size (the GDP fraction of government spending). Using a parsimonious dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, we show that the model׳s predictions under productivity shocks are not consistent with these facts. Instead, a demand-shock-driven model replicates the above facts while matching other domestic and international business cycle properties. An estimated version of the model confirms the quantitatively important impacts of demand shocks.

Keywords: Demand shocks; Trade openness; Government spending; International business cycles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E32 E60 F41 F44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:dyncon:v:69:y:2016:i:c:p:249-267

DOI: 10.1016/j.jedc.2016.05.019

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