Hurricanes in the Caribbean and Central-America represent a natural experiment to test the intertemporal approach to current account determination. The intertemporal approach allows for the possibility of intertemporal trade, via international borrowing. Previous tests of intertemporal current...

The paper examines the causes, consequences, and potential cures of the large current account deficits in the Southern Euro Area (SEA). These were mostly driven by a decline in private saving rates. But it was the European Monetary Union and the Euro, which enabled these countries to maintain...

In this work, we assess the existence of an S-Curve pattern in 10 Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC-10) for the relation between the trade balance and the terms of trade. Empirical results support the existence of this curve for Slovenia and Hungary. In the case of Bulgaria, the Czech...

This paper studies episodes of current-account reversal in developing countries (DCs) in the period 1965–1994. First, a number of persistent shifts (“reversalsâ€) in the current-account balance dynamics are identified by structural break and segmented trend tests; then, the...

I study the implications of productivity shocks in a model where agents observe the aggregate level of productivity but not its permanent and transitory components separately. The model's predictions under learning differ substantially from those under full information and are in line with...

Growth models of the Dutch disease, such as those of Krugman (1987), Matsuyama (1992), Sachs and Warner (1995) and Gylfason et al. (1999), explain why resource abundance may reduce growth. However, the literature also raises a new question: if the use of resource wealth hurts productivity...

This paper considers the implications of consumption and borrowing externalities in a small open economy framework. The former reflect the assumption that status conscious agents care about the relative consumption of imported goods, while the latter arise because agents do not take into account...