Abstract
We analyze the impact of financial globalization on business cycle synchronization utilizing a
proprietary database on banks’ international exposure for industrialized countries during 1978–
2006. Theory makes ambiguous predictions and identification has been elusive due to lack of
bilateral time-varying financial linkages data. In contrast to conventional wisdom and previous
empirical studies, we identify a strong negative e↵ect of banking integration on output synchronization,
conditional on global shocks and country-pair heterogeneity. Similarly, we show
divergent economic activity as a result of higher integration using an exogenous de-jure measure
of integration based on financial regulations that harmonized EU markets.