International macroeconomic fluctuations and the current account

Intertemporal models of the current account generally assume that global shocks do not affect the current account. We use this assumption to identify global and country-specific shocks in a bivariate VAR. We test the quality of the identification using evidence from G7-data. In accordance with the theory, we observe a link between the global shock and a measure of the world real interest rate. We also find that long-term output growth is driven by global factors in most countries, that country-specific shocks are less persistent in smaller economies and generally less volatile than global shocks