Value-added trade and business cycle synchronization

Ever since Frankel and Rose's (1998) seminal paper, the literature on trade and business cycle synchronization has relied on gross trade data, with weak results in recent papers that carefully address omitted variable bias. This paper re-examines this relationship using new value-added trade data for 63 advanced and emerging economies during 1995-2013. In a panel framework, we identify a significantly positive impact of bilateral (value-added) trade intensity on business cycle synchronization-controlling for global common shocks, country-pair heterogeneity and other covariates-that is absent when gross trade data are used. There is also some evidence that the impact of value-added trade on synchronization increases with the degree of (value-added) intra-industry trade. We provide a theoretical rationale for the role of value-added trade for synchronization using a simple international business cycle model that features cross-country input linkages in production.