Essays in global linkages and business cycles

This dissertation analyzes the effects of the globalization phenomenon on economic integration patterns and business cycles from three distinct perspectives.;The first essay looks at the major economic linkages explaining real GDP correlations for 47 countries during the 1970-2003 period using GMM-IV and simultaneous equations estimations. Results show that trade integration especially in the form of intra-industry trade and similarities in economic structure are the most important determinants of output correlations. While synchronization increases for country pairs with high degrees of financial openness, on average, global financial integration has a positive but weak effect. However, there is a strong feedback from financial openness to trade integration.;The second essay examines the changing nature of growth spillovers between developed economies and developing countries driven by the process of globalization. The essay uses macroeconomic and sectoral variables for 106 countries over the period 1960--2005. The panel regression results indicate that the impact of the Northern economic activity on the Emerging South has declined during the globalization period (1986--2005). In contrast, the growth linkages between the North and Developing South have been rather stable over time. The North and Emerging South economies have started to exhibit more intensive intra-group growth spillovers.;The third essay investigates the wealth effects on the durables and non-durables consumption in Turkey. The vector error correction models testing life-cycle and permanent income hypotheses are developed using quarterly data for the 1987-2006 period. This essay uses an originally constructed housing wealth series in addition to the stock market capitalization and bank deposits as proxies for the stock market and financial wealth respectively. Results show that in the long run, the non-durables consumption is not significantly affected by the stock market wealth in contrast to the durables consumption, while an increase in the housing wealth raises the consumption of non-durables, but has no effect on the consumption of durables.;The fourth essay looks at the housing market characteristics in Turkey and develops a methodology to estimate the housing wealth using primary sources. The fifth essay analyzes the financial wealth allocation and characteristics of the financial system in Turkey.