Macroeconomic Integration in Asia-Pacific: Common Stochastic Trends and Business Cycle Coherence

: This paper addresses the question of macroeconomic integration in the Asia-Pacific region. Economically, the analysis is based on the notions of stochastic long-run convergence and business cycle coherence. The econometric procedure consists of tests for cointegration, the examination of vector error correction models, different variants of common cycle tests and forecast error variance decompositions. Results in favor of cyclical synchrony can be partly established, and are even exceeded by the broad evidence for equilibrium relations. In this domain, several leading countries have been identified.