Does an improvement in growth prospects lead to a fall in the trade balance? The relevance of this question stems from the tendency for countercyclical fluctuations in the trade balance stressed by both the academic literature and policymakers. However, we do not find that improved growth...

We estimate a three-region (DE-REA-RoW) structural macroeconomic model, and we provide a counterfactual on how nominal exchange rate flexibility would have affected the German trade balance (TB) by simulating the shocks of the estimated model under a counterfactual flexible exchange rate regime....