Regional Business Cycle Phases in Spain

Abstract

We characterize regional business cycles for Spain using monthly Social Security affiliations. Based on a set of Markov-switching models, we find substantial synchronization of regional business cycles, which has increased since the Great Recession. We also find evidence of a regional leading and lagging performance that repeats itself across the different recessions. Typically, earlier signals of national recessions appear in the Islands and Valencia, and are propagated from the periphery to the center. Moreover, north-western regions tend to start the regional recoveries with a significant lag.