An influential explanation for the recent rise in the U.S. current account deficit is the boom in U.S. productivity. As U.S. productivity surged in the mid-1990s, capital was attracted to the U.S. to take advantage of the higher real returns. Using a two country general equilibrium model, this...

Does increased international liquidity, the saving glut explain the recent deterioration of US current account balances? In this paper, we develop a simple, two country real business cycle model to answer this question. The salient feature of our model is that lending by one country is...