Business cycle dynamics across the US states

The analysis of synchronization among regional or national business cycles has recently been attracting a growing interest within the economic literature. Far less attention has instead been devoted to a closely related issue: given a certain level of synchronization, some economies might be systematically ahead of others along the swings of the business cycle. We analyze this issue within a system of economies and show that leading (or lagging behind) is a feature that does not occur at random across the economies. In addition, we investigate the economic drivers that could explain this behavior. To do so, we employ data for 48 conterminous US states between 1990 and 2009.