Current account imbalances and their sustainability are among the most debated international policy issues. Through the recently designed External Balance Assessment methodology (EBA), the IMF estimates the impact of several countries' fundamentals and policies on their current account balance,...

Development accounting shows that a significant part of cross-country income differences is attributed to differences in total factor productivity (TFP), but the sources of TFP differences are not well understood. This paper considers the role of international trade to explain cross-country...

This paper analyzes, both theoretically and empirically, the link between capital inflows and the quality of economic institutions. To this purpose, we construct a small-open economy model of the “soft budget constraint” syndrome wherein persistently cheap funding from abroad (i) raises the...