Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
964437 Journal of International Money and Finance 2008 23 Pages PDF
Abstract

The intertemporal current account approach predicts that the current account of a small open economy is independent of global shocks, and that responses of the current account to country-specific shocks depend on the persistence of the shocks. This paper shows that these predictions impose cross-equation restrictions (CERs) on a structural vector autoregression (SVAR). To test the CERs, this paper develops identification schemes of the SVAR that exploit the orthogonality of the world real interest rate and country-specific shocks as well as the lack of a long-run response of net output to transitory shocks. Tests of the SVAR reveal two puzzling aspects of the Canadian and U.K. current account: (i) the response of the current account to a country-specific transitory shock is too large and (ii) the fluctuations in the current account are dominated by country-specific transitory shocks that explain almost none of the fluctuations in net output growth. These results imply the crucial role of consumption-tilting factors in explaining current account fluctuations of the two economies.

Related Topics
Social Sciences and Humanities Economics, Econometrics and Finance Economics and Econometrics
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