Evidence of the North-South business cycle

This article examines the economic fluctuations of two regional economies: the developed, industrial goods exporting countries of the world (which I call .North.) and the developing, non-fuel commodity exporting countries (or .South.). My principal objective is to document the salient features of their business cycles from 1970 to 1995. I frame the discussion around two questions. The first question is whether these very different regions share similar business cycle characteristics. The second question is whether there is an international business cycle, in other words, whether cyclical fluctuations in one region are positively correlated with cyclical fluctuations in the other.