Desynchronized : The Comovement of Non-Hydrocarbon Business Cycles in the GCC
ISBN: 9781463931117
Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / International Monetary Fund
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time
Subjects: Economics; Business/ Management;

This paper investigates the empirical characteristics of business cycles and the extent of cyclical comovement in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, using various measures of synchronization for non-hydrocarbon GDP and constituents of aggregate demand during the period 1990-2010. By applying the Christiano-Fitzgerald asymmetric band-pass filter and a mean corrected concordance index, the paper identifies the degree of non-hydrocarbon business cycle synchronization?one of the main prerequisites for countries considering to establish a monetary union. The empirical results show low and heterogeneous synchronization in non-hydrocarbon business cycles across the GCC economies, and a decline in the degree of synchronicity in the 2000s, if Kuwait is excluded from the sample, partly because of divergent fiscal policies.


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