Search Results
Working Paper
North-South financial integration and business cycles
This paper examines the business cycle implications of increased North-South trade in financial assets. We build a quantitative general equilibrium model of North-South trade and compare the model's predictions under two asset market assumptions: a restricted setting in which asset trade is limited to a non-contingent one-period bond market; and a highly integrated setting in which agents have access to a complete contingent-claims market. Simulations of the North-South model suggest that increased North-South trade in asset markets (a) lowers Southern consumption and output volatility, and ...
Journal Article
Are international business cycles different under fixed and flexible exchange rate regimes?
A major concern surrounding European Monetary Union is that output fluctuations of member countries may become more volatile under a common currency because they will have increased sensitivity to foreign business cycles. This article analyzes the link between exchange rate regimes and the behavior of international business cycles.
Working Paper
North-South terms of trade: an empirical investigation
My empirical analysis a reveals a strong link between the terms of trade of industrial and developing countries. I show that the terms of trade developing countries are essentially the relative prices of commodity exports and manufactured imports. Similarly, I find that terms of trade fluctuations of industrial countries are heavily influenced by movements in the relative price of manufactured exports and commodity imports. This means that improvements in the terms of trade of developing countries imply a worsening in the terms of trade of developing industrial countries, and vice versa. One ...
Journal Article
Is there evidence of the new economy in U.S. GDP data?
This article tests whether the trend growth rate of U.S. GDP changed significantly over the "new economy" period from 1996 to 2003. Based on estimates from widely used methods of trend/cycle decomposition, the author finds that the trend growth rate of GDP was not significantly higher over this period. This suggests that the U.S. was the same old economy in the latter half of the 1990s.
Journal Article
Understanding U.S. regional cyclical comovement: How important are spillovers and common shocks?
This article develops a statistical model to study the business cycles of the eight U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis regions. The author shows that the high level of cyclical comovement among per capita incomes of U.S. regions is the byproduct of common shocks to the regions rather than shocks that originate in one region and subsequently spill over to other regions.
Working Paper
Why do countries pursue bilateral trade agreements: a case study of North America
Current trade theory argues that countries pursue bilateral trade agreements to escape from a terms-of-trade driven prisoners' dilemma. This paper offers an empirical test of the theory. Using simulation results from a quantitative trade model of North America I show that the non-cooperative and cooperative payoffs implicit in the CFTA and NAFTA take on the two essential elements of a prisoners' dilemma. First, my results suggest that irrespective of county size unilateral liberalization makes the liberalizing country worse off, while making its regional trading partner better off. Next, I ...
Journal Article
A dynamic macroeconomic analysis of NAFTA
This article studies the impact of NAFTA on the three North American economies and a composite of their trading partners. The results suggest NAFTA will lead to welfare gains for all North American participants, with the greatest gains accruing to Mexico.