A Study On World Economic Cycles Under The Fictitious Economy

As human society entered the21st century, the world economy has undergone significant changes. Private financial assets and capital goods have been expanding rapidly; the interdependence of various international markets is continuously enhancing; the free enterprise system spreads globally. Economic globalization provides a basis for international business cycle to spread world-wide. People’s intuitive feeling is that, on the one hand, a country’s economy is more sensitive to external shocks, economic fluctuations among different countries become more and more related, and the transnational of economic cycle co-movement is increasing. On the other hand, the economic performances are closely linked to changes in financial markets and asset prices. Under internal and external shocks, financial activities showed persistent volatility and cyclical changes. Real Business Cycle Theory and the financial accelerator theory provide a theoretical and methodological basis for the transmission mechanism of the fictitious economy in the world economic cycle research. The nature of world economic cycles has changed over time due to trade and financial globalization. However, economic theory does not provide definitive guidance concerning the impact of increased trade and financial linkages on the co-movement among macroeconomic aggregates across countries. Hence choosing the appropriate model and data to conduct empirical study has important practical significance. Based on the model of the international business cycle theory, this dissertation conducted both theoretical and empirical studies from the perspective of fictitious economy development.The dissertation contents ten chapters:chapter1is an introduction part, it highlights the background and significance of the topics, defined the concepts, and gives the structural arrangement of the dissertation. Chapter2reviews the domestic and international theoretical and empirical studies in related field. Chapter3builds a two-country DSGE model with financial frictions and rigid nominal price. Alternative monetary policy regimes and parameter values were explored. Chapter4elaborated the development of fictitious economy and the evolution of world economic cycles in recent decades from a global perspective. Chapter5, chapters6 and7focus on the impact of financial integration on the degree of business cycle synchronization in world’s major regional economic organizations, namely the EU, the G7and Asia. Chapters8and9, from the aspects of country economy, analyzed the development status of the fictitious economy in the United States and China, as well as using panel data to conduct empirical analysis. Chapter10summarizes the basic conclusions and look to the future direction of the related field study.The dissertation draws following conclusions:First, the fictitious economy, to a certain extent, is independent to the real economy, and tends to amplify the fluctuation in real economy. Second, financial linkages could result in a higher degree of business cycle co-movement by generating large wealth effects. However, they could decrease the cross-country output correlations as they stimulate specialization of production through the reallocation of capital in a manner that consistent with countries’comparative advantage. Third, fictitious economy shows different impact on economic integration organizations at different stage of financial integration. Forth, generally, the development of fictitious economy in EU, G7and Asia has associated with the decrease in business cycles co-movement. Last but not least, the comparing analysis between the United States and China shows there is different impact on countries at different stage of fictitious economy development.The innovation of this dissertation is mainly reflected in the following areas: First, on the basis of the existing business cycle theory, from the perspective of fictitious economy, the dissertation elaborated the evolution and affecting factors of world economic cycles. Second, the dissertation carried out in-depth analysis in the perspective of both the global, regional and country level. Third, the dissertation used HP-filter technique for statistical analysis of more than30of the world’s major economies, calculated a number of important macroeconomic variables, and used a panel model to analyze and compare the data of more than100country pairs.