Tests of the present-value model of the current account are frequently rejected by the data. Standard explanations rely on the "usual suspects" of nonseparable preferences, shocks to fiscal policy and the world real interest rate, and imperfect international capital mobility. The authors confirm...

This paper assesses some of the explanations that have been put forward for the global pattern of current account imbalances that has emerged in recent years: in particular, the large U.S. current account deficit and the large surpluses of the Asian developing economies. Based on the approach...

Tests of the present-value model of the current account are frequently rejected by the data. Standard explanations rely on the "usual suspects" of nonseparable preferences, shocks to fiscal policy and the world real interest rate, and imperfect international capital mobility. The authors confirm...

a speech at the Bundesbank Lecture, Berlin, Germany

This Economic Letter presents recent research on a new explanation for both the export of savings and the import of equity by emerging countries: their level of underdevelopment of the financial sector compared to that of more advanced countries. Specifically, financial underdevelopment in...

In a world of mobile capital, the current system of nominal interest taxation implies that the cost of capital and the return to saving in each country are strongly and negatively correlated with the rate of inflation. It follows that a country's net foreign asset position (and its current...