This paper contributes to the understanding of the international financial linkages created by US banks by looking at the geographical composition and structure of the balance sheet of foreign branches. The empirical investigation, which is based on a novel dataset containing balance sheet...

The critical role of current account imbalances (CAI) is widely shared in the consensus narratives of the European crisis that followed the Great Recession. On the basis of this interpretation, new EU initiatives raised, in particular the so-called “Six Pack” adoption in 2011 and the...

This paper uses an intertemporal model of the current account to evaluate the fluctuations in current account balances experienced by Euro area countries over the last three decades. In the model current account balances are used to smooth consumption and they are driven by expectations about...

This paper surveys balance of payments constrained growth models from Thirlwall's original contribution in 1979 to the latest tests of the model using cointegration techniques. Historical antecedents of the model are explored (e.g. the Harrod trade multiplier; dual gap analysis; Prebisch's...

Several empirical studies are concerned with measuring the effect of currency and current account crises on economic growth. Using different empirical models this paper serves two aspects. It provides an explicit assessment of country specific factors influencing the costs of crises in terms of...

Between 1999 and the onset of the economic crisis in 2008 real exchange rates in Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain appreciated relative to the rest of the euro area. This divergence in competitiveness was reflected in the emergence of current account imbalances. Given that exchange rate...

During the pre-EMU period changes in real effective exchange rate or faster-than-trading-partners growth rates Granger caused changes in trade balance in most of the EMU-12 countries. However, our data driven article provides evidence that after the adoption of euro, these Granger causalities...