We assess the sustainability of the current account (CA) balance, net international investment position (NIIP) and net external debt (NED) in a sample of EU countries using two complementary approaches. First, we employ both time-series and panel-data stationarity tests of current account...

This study provides novel evidence on the impact of labor market institutions on current account dynamics. Our results suggest that a high degree of coordination of wage bargaining has a positive effect on the current account balance over the long run. This result is not driven entirely by wage...

The current account in developed countries is highly persistent and volatile in comparison to their output growth. The standard intertemporal current account model with rational expectations (RE) fails to explain the observed current account and consumption dynamics. The RE model extended with...

The assessment of external positions and exchange rates is a key mandate of the IMF. This paperpresents the updated External Balance Assessment (EBA) framework-a key input in the conduct ofmultilaterally-consistent external sector assessments of 49 advanced and emerging marketeconomies-following...

Previous studies have mostly focused on the relationship between macroeconomic shocks and trade balance adjustments of resource-rich countries while largely overlooked countries with trade composition of high resource-export and strong import-dependence such as Papua New Guinea. Utilising a...

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...

This study divides the world into currency zones according to the co-movement of each currency with the key currencies. The dollar zone groups economies that produce well over half of global GDP. The euro zone now includes almost all of Europe and some commodity producers, but remains less than...

On average, foreign corporations save a third of their local profits in the host country. While this is recorded as "Retained Earnings Foreign Direct Investment" (REFDI), macroeconomics has so far overlooked its particularities. This paper explores the aggregate economic properties of REFDI. It...

This paper aims to identify how much of the recent current account adjustment in Spain can be explained by cyclical factors. For this purpose, we consider the cross-country regressions in the IMF's External Balance Assessment (EBA) methodology but allowing for country-specific slopes and...