Thirlwall's law (Thirlwall 1979) considers that growth can be constrained by the balance of payments when the current account is in permanent deficit. The law focuses on external imbalances as impediments to growth and does not consider the case where internal imbalances (budget deficits or...

The present study aims to verify whether the balance-of-payments-constrained growth approach is suitable for explaining the Portuguese growth performance during the past decades. To smooth cyclical variations, 15-year overlapping periods are considered in the computation of "Thirlwall's law,"...