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The Deep Historical Roots of Macroeconomic Volatility

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  • Sam Hak Kan Tang
  • Charles Ka Yui Leung
Abstract
We present cross-country evidence that a country’s macroeconomic volatility, measured either by the standard deviation of output growth or the occurrence of trend-growth breaks, is significantly affected by the country’s historical variables. In particular, countries with longer histories of state-level political institutions experience less macroeconomic volatility in post-war periods. Robustness checks reveal that the effect of this historical variable on volatility remains significant and substantial after controlling for a host of structural variables investigated in previous studies. We also find that the state history variable is more important in countries with a higher level of macroeconomic volatility.

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  • Sam Hak Kan Tang & Charles Ka Yui Leung, 2016. "The Deep Historical Roots of Macroeconomic Volatility," ISER Discussion Paper 0967, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
    • Handle: RePEc:dpr:wpaper:0967
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    2. Tomomi Miyazaki & Haruo Kondoh, 2017. "Local Public Investment and Regional Business Cycle Fluctuations in Japan," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 37(1), pages 402-410.

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