Over the last twenty five years, current account imbalances have been both rising over the trend and have become more volatile over the cycle. In boom times, imbalances expanded while in times of a cyclical downturn they shrank. A rising trend has been mainly explained with two developments:...

The paper measures income elasticities of demand for manufacturing imports in China since 1990 disaggregated by major trading partners such as the US, Japan, Germany and rest of the EU. German exporters seem to have benefited from the highest demand elasticities. The paper proposes explanatory...