Business cycle synchronization in Asia-Pacific: New evidence from wavelet analysis

•We study business cycle synchronization in Asia-Pacific.•Specifically, we assess the comovement of growth cycles using wavelet analysis.•The comovement between China, Japan, USA and other Asia-Pacific economies.•We find that the degree of comovement fluctuates across frequencies and over time.•We emphasize the importance of examining comovement using a time-frequency framework.

We investigate the synchronization of growth cycles between China, Japan, the United States and other Asia-Pacific countries using wavelet analysis. While we find that the growth cycles of China, Japan, and the United States are synchronized with the other Asia-Pacific economies, the strength of business cycle synchronization fluctuates across frequencies and over time. Overall, China and other Asia-Pacific countries display a high degree of comovement at long-run developments, especially during and following the recent global financial crisis. Likewise, the strength of business cycle synchronization between Japan and most other Asia-Pacific economies increases at long-run fluctuations, however, for the entire sample period of 1993:2-2012:4. Also, the United States and other Asia-Pacific countries mostly experience a high degree of comovement at frequencies linked with fluctuations that range from between two and four years. Our results thus emphasize the importance of examining the strength of business cycle synchronization using a time-frequency framework.