Since the late-1990s, the global economy is characterised by historically low risk premia and an unprecedented widening of external imbalances. This paper explores to what extent these two global trends can be understood as a reaction to three structural shocks in different regions of the global...

We use a structural VAR with sign restrictions to jointly identify the impact of monetary policy, private absorption, technology and oil price shocks on current account fluctuations in the U.S.. We derive the sign restrictions from theoretical impulse response functions of a DSGE model with oil,...

This paper reviews three different concepts of equilibrium exchange rates that are widely used in policy analysis and constitute the backbone of the IMF CGER assessment: the Macroeconomic Balance, the External Sustainability and the reduced form approaches. We raise a number of econometric...

The global financial crisis has led to a revival of the empirical literature on current account imbalances. This paper contributes to that literature by investigating the importance of evaluating model and parameter uncertainty prior to reaching any firm conclusion. We explore three alternative...

The standard neoclassical model predicts that countries with higher productivity growth rates experience sharp increases in investment that are followed by rapid declines. This investment response contrasts with the empirical evidence that suggests a rather hump-shaped investment behavior. In...

The present paper extends the Obstfeld and Rogoff (2005) framework of current account imbalances by the oil exporting countries as a fourth region. It sets the stage for a variety of analysis that can be conducted within a four-region-setting that accounts for the importance of OPEC as a major...

this paper analyzes two effects which might have an important impact on a reduction of global external imbalances. These are valuation effects on the one hand and interest rate effects on the other hand. We use a four-region model that is based on the models by Obstfeld and Rogoff (2005) and...

Los desequilibrios del saldo por cuenta corriente y su sostenibilidad están entre los temas de política internacional más debatidos. Mediante una metodología recientemente diseñada —external balance assessment (EBA)—, el FMI estima el impacto sobre el saldo por cuenta corriente de sus...

Este trabajo pretende identificar en qué medida el reciente ajuste de la balanza por cuenta corriente española se debe a factores de naturaleza transitoria. A tal fin, consideramos la metodología del EBA (External Balance Assessment) propuesta por el Fondo Monetario Internacional, pero...

Después de la crisis reciente, se ha observado una reducción en los desequilibrios globales de los saldos por cuenta corriente («desequilibrios en términos de flujo»). Sin embargo, los desequilibrios globales medidos en términos de los activos externos netos de los países...