We revisit the so-called "secular international problem", whereby the adjustment of current account imbalances purportedly falls entirely on the shoulders of deficit countries. We introduce a stylised model to rationalise an asymmetric counter-cyclical policy reaction that is stronger for...

The influential work of Obstfeld and Rogoff argues that a closing-up of the US current account deficit involves a large exchange rate adjustment. However, the Obstfeld-Rogoff model works exclusively via demand-side channels and abstracts from possible supply-side changes. We extend the framework...

The paper examines over seventy episodes of current account adjustment in industrial and major emerging market economies. It argues that these episodes were characterised by strongly divergent economic developments. To reduce this divergence, the paper classifies episodes with similar...

This paper reviews three different concepts of equilibrium exchange rates that are widely used in policy analysis and constitute the backbone of the IMF CGER assessment: the Macroeconomic Balance, the External Sustainability and the reduced form approaches. We raise a number of econometric...