Many developing countries have adopted investor-friendly policies in recent years in order to attract export-oriented foreign direct investment (FDI). The effects of these policies on the external accounts have been largely ignored. This paper endogenizes FDI inflows in a structuralist general...

This paper documents that cross-border investment income flows are important for explaining current account balances in major economies. Those investment incomes reflect returns on cross-border asset holdings and on balance often reach magnitudes around 5% of major economies' gross domestic...