Search Results
Journal Article
In brief: high foreign real interest rates and investment in the 1990s
This article argues that high interest rates abroad have substantially depressed private investment in most foreign members of the Group of Seven during the 1990s. Business investment has been especially hard hit and housing construction disrupted, although the effect on housing has been offset in some countries by stimulative fiscal policies. The author estimates that overall, high interest rates have reduced output in the foreign G-7 by 2 1/2 to 4 1/4 percent per year on average over 1990-93.
Working Paper
U.S. official forecasts of Group of Seven economic performance, 1976-90
In this paper, we evaluate the accuracy of the U.S. Treasury Department forecasts of real growth and inflation from 1976 to 1990 for the Group of Seven (G-7) economies. The accuracy of these forecasts is measured against the standard of actual real world growth and inflation as subsequently published in the Treasury's World Economic Outlook (WEO). The primary comparison is to forecasts made by the OECD for each of the G-7 nations, but for the United States and Canada, we compare the forecasts to those made by the Blue Chip consensus and the Federal Reserve 'Greenbook'.
Journal Article
An investigation of co-movements among the growth rates of the G-7 countries
Early in 2000, after a decade of economic expansion, growth began to slow simultaneously in the large, advanced economies known as the Group of Seven (G-7)--Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The general slide in GDP growth fueled speculation that a period was emerging in which broad movements in the economies of the industrialized countries would be more closely linked. Proponents of this view argued that greater trade in goods and financial markets was leading to a greater synchronization of national economies. A rise in the co-movement of GDP ...
Journal Article
What caused the Great Moderation? : some cross-country evidence
Over the last 20 years or so, the volatility of aggregate economic activity has fallen dramatically in most of the industrialized world. The timing and nature of the decline vary across countries, but the phenomenon has been so widespread and persistent that it has earned the label: ?the Great Moderation.? A growing body of research has focused on the Great Moderation and its possible explanations, especially as it applies to the U.S. experience. The literature documents the international dimension of this volatility reduction, but so far little is known about the possible causes from a ...
Working Paper
Breaks in the variability and co-movement of G-7 economic growth
This paper investigates breaks in the variability and co-movement of output, consumption, and investment in the G-7 economies. In contrast with most other papers on co-movement, we test for changes in co-movement allowing for breaks in mean and variance. Despite claims that rising integration among these economies has increased output correlations among them, we find no clear evidence of an increase in correlation of growth rates of output, consumption, or investment. This finding is true even for the United States and Canada, which have seen a tremendous increase in bilateral trade shares, ...
Working Paper
Monetary disturbances matter for business fluctuations in the G-7
This paper examines the importance of monetary disturbances for cyclical fluctuations in real activity and inflation. It employs a novel identification approach which uses the sign of the cross-correlation function in response to shocks to assign a structural interpretation to orthogonal innovations. We find that monetary shocks significantly drive output and inflation cycles in all G-7 countries; that they are the dominant source of fluctuations in three of the seven countries; that they contain an important policy component, and that their impact is time varying.
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.