Macroeconomic fluctuations in developing countries: Some stylized facts

Abstract

This article documents the main stylized features of macroeconomic fluctuations for 12 developing countries. It presents cross-correlations between domestic industrial output and a large group of macroeconomic variables, including fiscal variables, wages, inflation, money, credit, trade, and exchange rates. Also analyzed are the effects of economic conditions in industrial countries on output fluctuations in the sample developing countries. The results point to many similarities between macroeconomic fluctuations in developing and industrial countries (procyclical real wages, countercyclical variation in government expenditures) and some important differences (countercyclical variation in the velocity of monetary aggregates). Their robustness is examined using different detrending procedures.