Posted: March 9th, 2016

“Sources and propagation of international output cycles: Common shocks or transmission?”

This assignment is based on the paper “Sources and propagation of international output cycles: Common shocks or transmission?” by Fabio Canova and Jane Marrinan (Journal of International Economics 46: 133–166, 1998). The details of the empirical analysis are described in Section 3 of the paper.
For the empirical study the authors used the data on quarterly GDP for the United States, Germany, and Japan, provided by the OECD database, for the period 1960:1 – 1994:4.
Download the data on quarterly GDP from the OECD database from 1960:1 to 2015:3 for these three countries and one more OECD country of your choice.
(a) Replicate the results reported in Section 3 of the paper as best as you can using the data for 1960:1 – 1994:4 for the original three countries (US, Germany, Japan). Repeat the procedure, first, for 1995:1 – 2015:3, and then for the entire time period, 1960:1 – 2015:3. Comment on any similarities and differences between your results and the results in the paper. (60 marks)
(b) Repeat the procedure, only for the entire time period, for the sample of four countries (US, Germany, Japan, and the country of your choice). Comment on any similarities and differences between your results in this part and in the previous part. Briefly summarize your findings. (40 marks)