A measure of how closely aligned the timing of movements in activity are for two countries over their business cycles. The cross-correlation statistic for two economic time series can range from -1 to 1.
In general, the closer the cross-correlation is to value of 1 the more in phase and synchronised the business cycles will be. A value of -1 would indicate that the two series move perfectly in a counter-cyclical direction. A value near zero indicates that there is no statistical relationship between the series.