Producer Services and the Current Account

Tobias Gruhle and Philipp Harms

Journal of International Money and Finance, 2022, vol. 121, issue C

Abstract: In this paper, we present evidence that countries which experienced a larger expansion of services as a share of GDP in recent years exhibited lower current account balances. We argue that this relationship is compatible with the notion that producer services raise aggregate productivity by enhancing increasing returns to specialization, and we develop a model in which the deregulation of the services industry results in higher GDP growth, a reallocation of resources into the services industry, and a temporary current account deficit. We demonstrate that our theoretical argument is supported by the data, even if we control for a multitude of other factors that potentially affect the current account. Finally, we relate our study to the IMF’s external balance assessment (EBA) exercise and demonstrate that, for several countries, the “current account gap” shrinks if we account for producer services.

Keywords: International macroeconomics; Current account; Producer services (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F32 F41 O14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261560621001650
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Producer Services and the Current Account (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jimfin:v:121:y:2022:i:c:s0261560621001650

DOI: 10.1016/j.jimonfin.2021.102514

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of International Money and Finance is currently edited by J. R. Lothian

More articles in Journal of International Money and Finance from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().