Search results for "Current account"
showing 7 items of 27 documents
Interest Rate Convergence, External Balances and the Euro Crisis
2016
Typically, the catching-up process between rich Northern Europe and poor Southern Europe and the diverging cost competitiveness between the two regions are considered alternative explanations for the widening current account imbalances in the euro area. This paper proposes a new explanation for the imbalances which led to the 2009 euro crisis i.e. large interest rate differentials among the EMU-12 countries which prevailed before the adoption of the euro. This finding suggests that the euro crisis was, at least to some extent, a consequence of the initial convergence shock.
Culture and current account balances
2014
This article contributes to the literature of current account balances by introducing cultural variables that until now have been omitted. The World Values Survey indicates that the Roman Catholics do not consider thrift as important as others. We propose that Catholic countries tend to run current account deficits. This result remains robust even if we control for close to all of the determinants that have been included in previous studies. We find evidence that the inclination of Catholic countries to have high levels of uncertainty avoidance goes to a great length in explaining the result. peerReviewed
Long-Run Determinants and Short-Run Dynamics of the Trade Balance in the Eu-15 Countries
2016
Several studies have analyzed the long-run determinants of current account balances using panel cointegration techniques. In this paper we will study both the long-run determinants and the short-run dynamics of the trade balances in the EU-15 countries. We will analyze each country separately and decompose the aggregate trade balance into the intra balance (trade balance vis-a-vis euro area) and the extra balance (trade balance vis-a-vis the rest of the world). Overall, our results suggest that there are significant differences in the long-run relations across the EU-15 countries which might be overlooked in the panel cointegration studies. In most of the countries there is a long-run coint…
Current Accounts and Coordination of Wage Bargaining
2018
This study provides novel evidence on the impact of labor market institutions on current account dynamics. Our results suggest that a high degree of coordination of wage bargaining has a positive effect on the current account balance over the long run. This result is not driven entirely by wage moderation induced by centralized wage setting. We also provide robust evidence that a high degree of coordination of wage bargaining is associated with a slower current account adjustment toward its long-run equilibrium. This result seems theoretically plausible; the aggregate shocks in the exporting sector are largely driven by idiosyncratic shocks and the presence of idiosyncratic shocks increases…
Essays on current account imbalances
2017
Global current account imbalances and intra-euro area imbalances have been at the forefront of academic and policy debates for the last ten years. This thesis examines the determinants of current account balances and external adjustment. It consists of an introduction and four empirical studies. This thesis highlights the importance of institutional factors such as differences in national cultures and cross-country differences in the coordination of wage bargaining on external balances. The first study investigates the effects of deep determinants on current account balances. The point estimates are economically and statistically significant, suggesting that countries populated by Roman Cat…
Growing Like Germany: Local Public Debt, Local Banks, Low Private Investment
2021
The paper uses a panel of more than 1m German firms over 2010-2016, to provide the first firm-bank level evidence of local crowding out for a developed economy characterized by low interest rates and fiscal austerity. Our mechanism relies on two structural features of Germany's banking landscape: the local segmentation of credit markets for small and medium-sized firms (SME) and the role of local public banks in local public finance. Local public banks dominate lending to small and medium firms in Germany and also have an explicit mandate to lend to the local public sector. With spreads on local government debt at all-time lows, local public banks tried to break even, using their market pow…