We explain how the external counterpart of the euro area M3 can be analysed by using the euro area balance of payments (b.o.p.). This is possible because the net external assets of the monetary financial institutions (MFIs) are present in two statistical frameworks that follow similar...

Are unregulated capital flows excessive during a stagflation episode? We argue that they likely are, owing to a macroeconomic externality operating through the economy's supply side. Inflows raise domestic wages through a wealth effect on labor supply and cause unwelcome upward pressure on...

We investigate the bilateral relationship between government budget balances and current account balances for Portugal and Germany. We find that the response of the current account balance to the budget balance is greater in Portugal than in Germany. On the other hand, the response of the budget...

Estimated DSGE models tend to ascribe a significant and often predominant part of a country's trade balance (TB) dynamics to domestic drivers ("shocks"), suggesting foreign factors to be only of secondary importance. This paper revisits the result based on more agnostic approaches to shock...

In this paper we characterize empirically the comovements of macro variables typically observed in middle income countries, as well as the boom-bust cycle that has been observed during the last two decades. We find that many countries that have liberalized their financial markets, have witnessed...

We investigate for the case of Germany the positive correlation between the corporate saving glut in the non-financial corporate sector and the current account surplus from a capital account perspective. By employing sign restrictions our findings suggest that mostly labor market, world demand...

We present estimates of finance-adjusted output gaps which incorporate the information on the domestic and global credit cycles for a sample of emerging market economies (EMEs). Following recent BIS research, we use a state-space representation of an HP filter augmented with a measure of the...

We investigate the drivers of the negative correlation between housing markets and the current account in Spain. By employing robust sign restrictions, which we derive from a DSGE model for a currency union, we analyze the effects of domestic pull and foreign push factors in the mixed frequency...

We investigate for Germany the positive correlation between the corporate savings glut in the non-financial corporate sector and the current account surplus from a capital account perspective. By employing sign restrictions our findings suggest that mostly labor market, world demand and...

Turkey's high current account deficit has been at the core of macroeconomic policy discussions in recent years. Quantifying the role of cyclical factors in driving the current account fluctuations is essential for designing an appropriate policy response and evaluating the impact of policy...