This paper estimates a simple consumption-smoothing model of the French current account, and examines its capacity to predict recent developments in France`s external performance. The model views the current account as a buffer through which private agents can smooth consumption over time in...

This paper uses cross-section and panel data to examine the determinants of the current account. The empirics find a significant impact of the stage of development and demographic factors in the cross section. Estimating partial-adjustment and error-correction models using panel data, the paper...

The business cycles of advanced economies are synchronized. Standard macro models fail to explain that fact. This paper presents a simple model of a two-country, two-traded-good, complete-financial-markets world in which country-specific productivity shocks generate business cycles that are...

This paper assesses the impact of both monetary and fiscal policy along with other macroeconomic determinants on economic activity using state-level Indian data. Since economic activity can vary across states due to local factors and state government policies, a state-level empirical analysis,...

A view receiving increased support is that the height of trade costs in prime export sectorshas a strong effect on current account balances: countries specializing in sectors that facerelatively high trade costs, such as services, tend to run current account deficits, andsimilarly, countries...

The reduction of global imbalances observed during the climax of crisis is incomplete. In this context, currencies' realignments are still proposed to ensure global macroeconomic stability. These realignments are based on equilibrium rates derived from equilibrium exchange rate models. Among...

Appendix A provides details for the computation of our model's equilibrium paths, the construction of model national and international accounts, and the sensitivity of our main findings to alternative parameterizations of the model. We demonstrate that the main finding of our paper - namely,...

The intertemporal current account approach predicts that the current account of a small open economy is independent of global shocks, and that responses of the current account to country-specific shocks depend on the persistence of the shocks. This paper shows that these predictions impose...

Financially closed economies insure themselves against current-account shocks using international reserves. We characterize the optimal management of reserves using an open-economy model of precautionary savings and emphasize several results. First, the welfare-based opportunity cost of reserves...

This paper explores the effect of news shocks on the current account and other macroeconomic variables using worldwide giant oil discoveries as a directly observable measure of news shocks about future output - the delay between a discovery and production is on average 4 to 6 years. We first...