Accounting for U.S. Current Account Deficits: An Empirical Investigation

Abstract: This paper investigates the relationship between the U.S. current account deficit and a number of macroeconomic variables including government spending, budget balance, productivity, domestic and foreign income, real interest rates, and terms of trade. Implications of the conventional "twin deficit" and the dynamic optimizing approaches are tested using a Vector Error Correction Model. Innovation accounting results indicate that macroeconomic variables explain the current account reasonably well, and the evidence seems to support the conventional approach where budget deficits and increases in the real interest rates are associated with curent account deficits.

JEL-codes: F3 F4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1995-02-22
Note: The paper is a binary WordPerfect 5.1 file submitted via FTP. The document was prepared on a 486 IBM-compatible for printing on a LaserJet 4M. The author reports that the figures are not with the paper. Readers interested in receiving the figures should e-mail the author - sdibo at siucvmb.siu.edu . This paper was presented at the 64th Annual Conference of the
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Related works:
Journal Article: Accounting for US Current Account Deficits: An Empirical Investigation (1997)
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