Business Cycle Synchronization between European and Non-European Union Countries

This research study dealt with the question of the business cycle synchronization in the European and non-European Union countries. More specifically, it examined the business cycle synchronization degree between the EU and non-EU countries with the United States and France. Moreover, it analyzed the correlation degree between EU and non-EU groups of countries during the three financial turbulence periods. On the other hand, it tried to test the existence or nonexistence of a short- and long-run relationship between these two groups of countries (EU and nonEU). To achieve these objectives, some approaches based on the studies of Harding and Pagan (2006), such as the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) and the Autoregressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) were used. This study proceeded with the use of quarterly seasonally adjusted GDP covering the period 1990-Q1 - 2016-Q2