News

The Institute of Economics will hold a Webinar as part of its Seminar Series on Tuesday, May 5, 2020: Marco Pangallo, will present the paper: Synchronization of endogenous business cycles.

Abstract:

Comovement of economic activity across sectors and countries is a defining feature of business cycles. However, standard models that attribute comovement to propagation of exogenous shocks struggle to generate a level of comovement that is as high as in the data. In this paper, the authors consider models that produce business cycles endogenously, through some form of non-linear dynamics---limit cycles or chaos. These models generate stronger comovement, because they combine shock propagation with synchronization of endogenous dynamics. In particular, the authors study a demand-driven model in which business cycles emerge from strategic complementarities across sectors in different countries, synchronizing their oscillations through input-output linkages. The authors first use a combination of analytical methods and extensive numerical simulations to establish a number of theoretical results. The paper shows that the importance that sectors or countries have in setting the common frequency of oscillations depends on their eigenvector centrality in the input-output network, and we develop an eigendecomposition that explores the interplay between non-linear dynamics, shock propagation and network structure. The authors then calibrate the model to data on 27 sectors and 17 countries, showing that synchronization indeed produces stronger comovement, giving more flexibility to match the data.

The webinar will be held via Microsoft Teams. All interested participants should contact the organizers.