 When Do Long‐term Imbalances Lead to Current Account Reversals?Kenza Benhima and Olena Havrylchyk The World Economy, 2010, vol. 33, issue 1, 107-128 Abstract: We extend the literature on sharp reductions in current account deficits by taking into account not only short‐term determinants, but also the deviation of net foreign assets from their long‐run equilibrium level. First, we analyse the long‐term relationship between net foreign assets and a set of explanatory variables and construct a measure of imbalances. Next, we model current account reversals by incorporating this new measure and compare the predictive power of this model with the baseline specification that does not account for long‐term imbalances. Our new model has a superior performance in and out‐of‐sample, especially when we control for the sign of imbalances. We also find that low net foreign assets do not necessarily lead to sharp reductions in current account deficits; it is rather the situation when they are below their equilibrium level that triggers reversals. Finally, we document that our new measure of net foreign asset imbalances is important only for developing countries, whereas standard models perform well for industrial economies. Date: 2010 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:worlde:v:33:y:2010:i:1:p:107-128 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article The World Economy is currently edited by David Greenaway More articles in The World Economy from Wiley Blackwell |
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