International Co-movements and Business Cycles Synchronization Across Advanced Economies: A SPBVAR Evidence

This paper provides new empirical insights in order to give a relevant contribution to the more recent literature on international transmission of shocks and on business cycles synchronization across developed economies, with a particular emphasis in the most recent recession and post-crisis consolidation. Interdependence, commonality and heterogeneity in macroeconomic-financial linkages are also identified in order to depict the perplexed nature of modern economies. A time-varying Structural Panel Bayesian Vector Autoregression (SPBVAR) model is developed to deal with model misspecification and unobserved heterogeneity problems when studying multicountry dynamic panels. The results argue for significant synchronization behind a relevant consolidation without delay. Additionally, consolidation is needed to underpin confidence in fiscal solvency at the country level and prevent adverse international externalities. My evidence calls for more integrated macroprudential and financial stability policies. It also shows that, when formulating policies or forecasting, additional transmission channels and economic-institutional issues through which fiscal contractions influence the dynamics of the GDP growth need to be accounted for in muticountry setups.