The changing nature of the U.S. economic influence in the World

We argue that the U.S.-led global recession revealed a change in the nature of the U.S. economic influence over the world, evidenced by the unusual delay between the U.S. downturn and its full manifestation in other economies. To validate our argument we conduct a real-time analysis of the evolution of the U.S. business cycles’ influence over other countries’ business cycles from 1960 to 2007. Our findings suggest that since the early 1980s, cyclical movements in the U.S. economy affect other economies with a lag, rather than contemporaneously. There seems to be an increasing delay between a U.S. downturn and its full manifestation in other economies, suggesting that the U.S. economic influence is still strong but more delayed than before.