Common and Country-specific Fluctuations in Productivity, Investment, and the Current Account

Dynamic factor analysis and Kalman filtering are used to construct a measure of common economic activity for the G7 countries. Common movements are important in productivity, but account for a substantially smaller share of movements in investment, and virtually none of the variation in the current accounts. For all seven countries, country-specific investment fluctuations have a significant negative impact on the current account, while country-specific productivity movements have little effect. A multi-country dynamic general equilibrium model is analyzed which is consistent with our qualitative findings. The model overstates, however, the quantitative importance of investment fluctuations for movements in the current account.