A number of developing countries have run large and persistent current account deficits in both the late seventies/early eighties and in the early nineties, raising the issue of whether these persistent imbalances are sustainable. This paper puts forward a notion of current account...

The European Monetary Union is stuck in a severe balance-of-payments imbalance of a nature similar to the one that destroyed the Bretton Woods System. Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy have suffered from balance-of-payments deficits whose accumulated value, as measured by the Target...

In this paper a minimal general equilibrium intertemporal model, with optimizing consumers and producers, is developed to analyze the process of real exchange rate determination. The model is completely real, and considers a small open economy that produces and consumes three goods each period....

The paper uses an intertemporal perfect-foresight optimizing model to analyze the effect of transitory terms-of-trade shocks on a small open . economy's current-account and utility time profiles. An adverse terms-of-trade shift known to be temporary induces the economy to run down its stock of...

The current account dynamics is examined for a small open economy which is subject to exogenous changes in its static terms of trade and in world interest rates. The model used is one with overlapping finite-lived generations, which we argue gives rise to a more reasonable saving behaviour than...

In this paper a general equilibrium intertemporal model with optimizing consumers and producers is developed to analyze how the temporary term's of trade disturbances affect the path of real exchange rates and the current account. Changes in the internal terms of trade (due to tariff changes)...

I examine the evolution of the Japanese trade balance and its relation to the terms of trade and the value of the yen. Using a vector time series model, I predict that the trade surplus will fall from a high of 3.7 percent of GNP in late 1992 to about 2.6 percent in 1995. This relatively modest...

This paper studies the macroeconomic effects of an increase in the price of an imported intermediate production input. The framework of the analysis is a small open economy with abating exchange rate and endogenous terms if trade, in which saving depends on residents'(variable) rate of time...

We develop a simple model of international trade with heterogeneous firms that is consistent with a number of stylized features of the data. In particular, the model predicts positive as well as zero trade flows across pairs of countries, and it allows the number of exporting firms to vary...

In this paper I use a panel data set to investigate the mechanics of sudden stops of capital inflows and current account reversals. I am particularly interested in four questions: (a) What is the relationship between sudden stops and current account reversals? (b) To what extent does financial...