Can the standard international business cycle model explain the relation between trade and comovement?2005

"Recent empirical research finds that pairs of countries with stronger trade linkages tend to have more highly correlated business cycles. The authors assess whether the standard international business cycle framework can replicate this intuitive result. They employ a three-country model with transportation costs, and they simulate the effects of increased goods market integration under two asset market structures: complete markets and international financial autarky. The main finding is that under both asset market structures the model can generate stronger correlations for pairs of countries that trade more, but the increased correlation falls far short of the empirical findings. Even when the authors control for the fact that most country pairs are small with respect to...