This paper provides an empirical investigation of the medium-term determinants of current accounts for a large sample of industrial and developing countries. The analysis is based on a structural approach that highlights the roles of the fundamental macroeconomic determinants of saving and...

To update a famous old statistic: a political leader in a developing country is almost twice as likely to lose office in the 6 months following a currency crash as otherwise. This difference, which is highly significant statistically, holds regardless whether the devaluation takes place in the...

We investigate the role of budget balances, financial development and openness, in the evolution of global imbalances. Financial development or the lack thereof has received considerable attention as a possible contributing factor to the development of persistent and expanding current account...