Intranational Business Cycles in the United States

Abstract

We establish a comprehensive set of stylized facts for intranational business cycles across states and regions in the U.S. Notable findings are that the cross correlation of our consumption measure is much less than that for output, and the volatility of the real exchange rate between states is much less than that for output. These findings are contrasted with the quantity and price 'anomalies' found in international business cycle data. Additional results for labor and non-labor earnings suggest that the observed amount of intratemporal risk sharing is quite limited as compared to that for intertemporal risk sharing.

Keywords: Business cycles, quantity anomaly, price anomaly

JEL Classification: E20, E32, E31