The Current Account, a Real-Time Signal of Economic Imbalances or 20/20 Hindsight?
Niall Conroy and
Eddie Casey
The Economic and Social Review, 2019, vol. 50, issue 1, 77-102
Abstract:
The current account balance has a rich tradition as an indicator of macroeconomic imbalances – one considered essential in terms of presaging the recent financial crisis. However, we show that the current account balance may be misleading in real time. Preliminary estimates are subject to large revisions and are often of a sufficient magnitude to cross key international thresholds for signalling macroeconomic imbalances. We find some evidence that revisions in certain countries may be systematically biased and, hence, predictable. Exploring the Irish current account data in detail, we find that trade statistics dominate revisions.
Keywords: current account balance; macroeconomics; Ireland (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.esr.ie/article/view/1119/212 (application/pdf)
Related works:
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:eso:journl:v:50:y:2019:i:1:p:77-102
Access Statistics for this article
More articles in The Economic and Social Review from Economic and Social Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Aedin Doris ().