This paper examines the adequacy of data on current accounts and international indebtedness as measures of the need for policy adjustments and coordination. Doubts about the adequacy of these data have been raised by the growth of the global current account discrepancy and the statistical...

The U.S. current account deficit widened further in 1997, reaching $166 billion. U.S. imports of goods continued to exceed exports by a substantial margin. However, goods trade accounted for only a small part of the deterioration in the current account balance last year. The shift of investment...

This paper was prepared for the meeting of the Panel on International Capital Transactions of the National Research Council (National Academy of Sciences), April 23, 1992. There are well-documented inadequacies in the data on U.S. international capital flows, cross-border holdings of assets, and...

New questions dealing with the growth of foreign direct investment in the United States have prompted this reassessment of the adequacy of U.S. data on direct investment--data on both foreign direct investment in the United States and U.S. direct investment abroad. We have examined the adequacy...

The statistical discrepancy in the U.S. international transactions accounts has tended to be both large and positive over the last decade and a half. In 1990 the statistical discrepancy rose by $45 billion to a record $64 billion and brought the cumulative discrepancy since 1960 to almost $250...

In the 1980s, the United States developed a large and persistent current account deficit, financed by borrowing from abroad. The purpose of this paper is to explore the sustainability of these large deficits from one of several possible perspectives. Simulations of a model of the U.S. current...