Global current account imbalances were a major subject of concern in the years before the recent financial crisis. It is shown that the expected (negative) equilibrium relationship between net foreign assets and the trade balance that had held in the previous twenty years appeared to break down...

Theory suggests a significant positive relationship in long-run equilibrium between net foreign assets (NFA) as a proportion of GDP and real exchange rates. Empirical tests have ignored two issues: the large variation in cross-country trade/GDP ratios, which is likely to induce substantial...

Many currencies, especially those of countries with negative net foreign assets, tend to depreciate during times of financial turbulence. Using a panel of 26 currencies over the period 1/1997 - 6/2016, I show that the composition of net foreign assets matter for the exchange rate sensitivity to...

This paper investigates the temporal links between two models of equilibrium exchange rate, namely the behavioral and the fundamental approaches. Our results show that, even though in the long-run they are closely related, important differences are observed for some countries and/or some...

The US dollar is the most prevalent currency to settle internationally traded merchandise. A few existing studies demonstrate that the US dollar can significantly impact a country's trade balance with a non-US partner. Nevertheless, the current literature indicates the remarkable deficiency of...

Rising current account and merchandise trade imbalances marked the years before the global financial and economic crisis. These imbalances either contributed to or precipitated the crisis and to the extent that they create systemic risks, it is desirable that they be reduced. There are many...

This paper examines the effects of border-adjusted consumption taxes (mainly value added taxes or VATs) in a sample of 34 advanced economies from 1970 through 2015. We find that the real exchange rate tends to rise by the full amount of any consumption tax increase, with little effect on the...

Previous studies have mostly focused on the relationship between macroeconomic shocks and trade balance adjustments of resource-rich countries while largely overlooked countries with trade composition of high resource-export and strong import-dependence such as Papua New Guinea. Utilising a...

China's trade surplus is often heavily criticized in political and economic debates, accompanied by claims for a revaluation of the Chinese currency, the Renminbi (RMB). While the main arguments exchanged in the current discourse appear to become more and more emotionally loaded rather than...

This paper examines the persistent deterioration in the international external position of the U.S. over the past 60 years. I develop a model without Ponzi schemes and arbitrage opportunities that accounts for both the secular rise and the cyclical variations in the U.S. international debt...