بازارهای نوظهور در شبکه اقتصاد جهانی: تجزیه واقعی؟

We evaluate the degree of business cycle interdependence in the global economic network, focusing on the hypothesis that emergent market (EM) economies have decoupled from advanced economies in the recent period of globalization. We employ a novel methodological approach to the study of business cycles synchronization that combines network analysis and dynamic correlations. We find a process of increasing transnational interdependence within and across all economic development groups. Our results suggest that EM do not form a cohesive group and support the view of an increasingly multipolar and interdependent global economic network.

In this paper we evaluate the degree of business cycles interdependence, focusing on the hypothesis that emergent market (EM) economies have decoupled from advanced economies in the recent period of globalization. During the past two decades, EM economies have greatly increased their share in the global economy. With average growth over 5% in the period 1996–2010, they presently account for 36% of global GDP. According to the World Bank 2011 Global Development Horizons prospects, by 2025 six major emerging economies–Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, and Russia–will account for more than half of global growth. World Bank [1] report argues that emerging growth poles will alter the balance of global growth, leading to a multipolar international economy that will bring benefits and pose new challenges for both developing and advanced economies. A significant part of business cycle synchronization (BCS) literature presents evidence for an emerging process of transnational synchronization of business cycles. Record high levels of global synchrony during the first decade of 21st century, unprecedented or at least not seen in the post-war era, is a phenomenon also observed by studies applying diverse methodological approaches. The majority of BCS empirical studies are based on samples comprised of advanced economies, with a particular incidence on European Union [2], [3], [4] and [5], G7 [6] and [7] and OECD economies [8] and [9]. Are EM business cycles taking part of the synchronization process shared by advanced economies? During the 2000’s several emergent market economies have undertaken reforms designed to insulate them from adverse shocks from the rest of the world. Accordingly, research from institutions like IMF [10] have argued that these economies would hardly be affected by the subprime crisis of 2007–2008 and suggested that growth in EM economies would carry the world for several years while the United States and Europe recovered. Following this framework, a branch of BCS literature investigates the real decoupling hypothesis, enquiring if EM business cycles have decoupled from advanced economies in the recent period of globalization. On the one hand, economic theory predicts that the deepening of economic linkages between advanced and emerging economies should bring their cycles closer and make them more interdependent and vulnerable to common shocks. On the other hand, the fact that the EM themselves became sources of growth could make them more independent and resilient to shocks arising in advanced economies. Recent empirical studies suggest that during the recent period of globalization there has been a convergence of business cycles within the groups of advanced and emerging markets economies but a decoupling between the two groups [11] and [12]. However, several studies show that such real decoupling process has been accompanied by a financial recoupling process [13] and [14] while others argue that a recoupling process, rather than decoupling, has emerged between the groups [15]. We employ a novel methodological approach that combines network analysis and dynamic correlations and apply it to the study of business cycle synchronization in the period 1952–2011. Economies are classified as advanced (ADV), emergent market (EM) or other developing (DEV) economies and grouped according to their degree of economic development. We address the real decoupling hypothesis by examining (1) if business cycles have decoupled within and across development groups and (2) if the EM economies group forms a cohesive and coherent pole in the global economic network (GEN). The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces the methodological approach, deriving the dynamic conditional correlations model and the minimum spanning tree resultant from the selected network filtering procedure. Section 3 provides the results of the empirical analysis, discussing separately the enquiries above. Section 4 concludes and suggests further topics for research.

We find a process of increasing transnational economic interdependence within and across all groups of economic development over the past six decades, revealing a significant acceleration in recent years (1996–2011). Interestingly, our results support the view that the global recession of 2009 propagated rapidly due to high levels of not only financial but also real interdependence between economies. This global trend phenomenon is the leading feature shaping the compactness of the global economic network and it shows to be particularly evident at the network core among advanced economies and between advanced and EM economies. However, there is also evidence of a trend towards economic development clustering, as business cycles tend to be connected first and foremost to economies sharing the same degree of development. Although emergent market economies have become important drivers of global growth, our results suggest that EM do not form a cohesive pole in the global economic network. For EM economies, geographical proximity seems to matter more than economic similarity. We find that half of EM economies cluster around two important geographical branches (East Asia and Eastern Europe) while the remaining occupy peripheral positions in the network. During the entire sample period (1952–2011), the EM group displayed very low cohesion levels between EM business cycles, remaining primarily connected to other developing and to advanced economies. A heterogeneous pattern characterizes the recent development of interconnections between EM subgroups and ADV group, as the EM East Asia branch approached the network core rapidly by converging significantly to ADV business cycles’ dynamics. A number of topics for further research can be suggested by this paper. One is to research the network’s local topological properties and their impact on local economic growth and global economic asymmetries, which can be relevant for a comprehensive understanding of the economic globalization process. Other topics can be related to the study of the determinants of real economic interdependence and how they are described by real direct linkages (eg. bilateral trade, FDI), financial markets integration or institutional unification.