This paper examines the effects of regional versus global integration and trade versus financial integration on regional business cycle synchronization in three regions containing developing and emerging countries (East Asia, Latin America, and Central and Eastern Europe). The main empirical results are as follows: (1) strong and similar common global linkages, especially financial linkages, have significant positive effects on the synchronization of regional business cycles; (2) after controlling global linkages, regional trade integration has a positive effect on regional business cycle synchronization, whereas regional financial integration has a negative effect; and (3) although the direction for the effect of each type of integration is similar across regions, the relative importance of each in explaining regional business cycle synchronization is different. Specifically, while global financial linkages play the most important role in East Asia and Latin America, regional trade integration is most important in Central and Eastern Europe.

As one of the few generalities in ecology, Taylor’s power law admits a power function relationship V = aM b between the variance V and mean number M of organisms in a quadrat. We examine the spatial distribution data of seven urban service facilities in 37 major cities in China, and find that Taylor’s Law is validated among all types of facilities. Moreover, Taylor’s Law is robust if we shift the observation window or vary the size of the quadrats. The exponent b increases linearly with the logarithm of the quadrat size, i.e. b ( s ) = b 0 + A log ( s ). Furthermore, the ANOVA test indicates that b takes distinct values for different facilities in different cities. We decompose b into two different factors, a city-specific factor and a facility-specific factor (FSF). Variations in b can be explained to a large extent by the differences between cities and types of facilities. Facilities are more evenly distributed in larger and more developed cities. Competitive interchangeable facilities (e.g. pharmacy), with larger FSFs and smaller b s, are less aggregated than complementary services (e.g. restaurants).

This paper examines the effects of regional versus global integration and trade versus financial integration on regional business cycle synchronization in three regions containing developing and emerging countries (East Asia, Latin America, and Central and Eastern Europe). The main empirical results are as follows: (1) strong and similar common global linkages, especially financial linkages, have significant positive effects on the synchronization of regional business cycles; (2) after controlling global linkages, regional trade integration has a positive effect on regional business cycle synchronization, whereas regional financial integration has a negative effect; and (3) although the direction for the effect of each type of integration is similar across regions, the relative importance of each in explaining regional business cycle synchronization is different. Specifically, while global financial linkages play the most important role in East Asia and Latin America, regional trade integration is most important in Central and Eastern Europe.

This paper examines the effects of internal (or regional) vs. external (inter-regional) integration and of trade vs. financial integration on regional business cycle synchronization in Asia. The empirical results show the following: (1) similar and strong common external linkages have significant positive effects on regional business cycle synchronization; (2) after controlling for external linkages, internal trade integration has a positive effect on regional business cycle synchronization but internal financial integration has a negative effect; and (3) the measures of external linkages, particularly the measure of external financial linkages, are more important than those of internal linkages in explaining regional business cycle co-movements.

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