An empirical analysis of current account data

This thesis analyzes certain aspects of the current account balance and its relationship to economic growth. Employing recently developed statistical and econometric techniques for estimation of non linear models, crises phenomena connected to the balance of payments are focused. The analysis of crises phenomena has been subject to tremendous research efforts over the last decades. However, this thesis addresses several empirical and methodological issues, which have received less attention, namely the incorporation of latent heterogeneity and serial dependence structures in empirical models employed for explaining and assessing crises and their influence on economic growth.