Output Volatility in Emerging Market and Developing Countries: What Explains the “Great Moderation” of 1970-2003?

Output volatility and the size of output drops have declined across groups of nontransition countries studied in this paper over the past three decades, but have remained considerably higher in developing countries than in industrial countries. The paper employs a Bayesian latent dynamic factor model to decompose output growth into global, regional, and country-specific components. The favorable trends in output volatility and large output drops in developing countries are found to have resulted from lower country-specific volatility and more benign country-specific events. Evidence from cross-section regressions over the 1970–2003 period suggests that the volatility of discretionary fiscal spending and terms of trade volatility together with exchange rate flexibility were key determinants of volatility and large output drops.