International macroeconomic fluctuations and the current account

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Description/Abstract

Intertemporal models of the current account generally assume that global shocks do not affect the current account. We use this assumption to identify global and country-specific shocks in a bivariate VAR. We test the quality of the identification using evidence from G7-data. In accordance with the theory, we observe a link between the global shock and a measure of the world real interest rate. We also find that long-term output growth is driven by global factors in most countries, that country-specific shocks are less persistent in smaller economies and generally less volatile than global shocks