The authors estimate gravity models using a large panel of bilateral trade flows across 61 countries between 1980 and 2003, which are applied as a benchmark for the integration of Central and South Eastern European countries with the euro area. They show that a careful examination of the fixed...

This paper investigates the large current account deficits observed in most new EU member states using an intertemporal model. The standard model is extended to include: (1) the persistence of current account positions and (2) the relevance of the fiscal balance. Specifically, a closed form...

This paper introduces a new methodology for the estimation of demand trade elasticities based on an import intensity-adjusted measure of aggregate demand, with the foundation of a stylized theoretical model. We compute the import intensity of demand components by using the OECD Input-Output...

This paper uses a Global Vector Auto-Regression (GVAR) model featuring 21 emerging market and advanced economies to investigate the factors behind the dynamics of global trade flows, with a particular view on the issue of global trade imbalances and on the conditions of their unwinding. The GVAR...

The impact of currency collapses (i.e. large nominal depreciations or devaluations) on real output remains unsettled in the empirical macroeconomic literature. This paper provides new empirical evidence on this relationship using a dataset for 108 emerging and developing economies for the period...

Periods of economic and financial stress traditionally give rise to profound changes in economic theory and in the way policy decisions are taken. Motivated by the recent interest in renewing macroeconomics after the global financial crisis, we collected the views of senior central bank staff in...

This article introduces a special section of the American Economic

As the world economy slowly recovers from the Great Recession and global trade flows remain weak, net trade contributions to domestic growth become more critical.