International Business Cycles Under Fixed and Flexible Exchange Rate Regimes

Abstract:     
This paper studies the changing characteristics of post-war international comovement under fixed and flexible exchange regimes. I find that business cycle comovement among all the G7 economies was highest in the universally flexible exchange rate era following the collapse of Bretton Woods (BW) and before the Basle-Nyborg agreement tightened the bands governing the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). With the exception of a few examples (Canada/US and Germany/France) G7 business cycles were far less synchronized in the universally fixed exchange rate BW era. More recently the ERM period in which continental Europe maintained fixed exchange rates, is characterized by a high degree of comovement among continental Europe and the English-speaking G7 countries, with little synchronization across these groups. I find that these changing patterns of comovement were driven by changes in the propagation of shocks rather changes in the relative volatility of shocks themselves across these time periods.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 65

Keywords: International Business Cycles, Exchange rate regimes, Band-pass filter

JEL Classification: E31, F41, F42, F47

working papers series