IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eso/journl/v50y2019i1p77-102.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Current Account, a Real-Time Signal of Economic Imbalances or 20/20 Hindsight?

Author

Listed:
  • Niall Conroy

    (Irish Fiscal Advisory Council)

  • Eddie Casey

    (Irish Fiscal Advisory Council)

Abstract

The current account balance has a rich tradition as an indicator of macroeconomic imbalances – one considered essential in terms of presaging the recent financial crisis. However, we show that the current account balance may be misleading in real time. Preliminary estimates are subject to large revisions and are often of a sufficient magnitude to cross key international thresholds for signalling macroeconomic imbalances. We find some evidence that revisions in certain countries may be systematically biased and, hence, predictable. Exploring the Irish current account data in detail, we find that trade statistics dominate revisions.

Suggested Citation

  • Niall Conroy & Eddie Casey, 2019. "The Current Account, a Real-Time Signal of Economic Imbalances or 20/20 Hindsight?," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 50(1), pages 77-102.
    • Handle: RePEc:eso:journl:v:50:y:2019:i:1:p:77-102
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.esr.ie/article/view/1119/212
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Maurice Obstfeld, 2012. "Does the Current Account Still Matter?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(3), pages 1-23, May.
    2. Alessi, Lucia & Antunes, Antonio & Babecky, Jan & Baltussen, Simon & Behn, Markus & Bonfim, Diana & Bush, Oliver & Detken, Carsten & Frost, Jon & Guimaraes, Rodrigo & Havranek, Tomas & Joy, Mark & Kau, 2015. "Comparing different early warning systems: Results from a horse race competition among members of the Macro-prudential Research Network," MPRA Paper 62194, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vassilis Monastiriotis & Cigdem Borke Tunali, 2020. "The Sustainability of External Imbalances in the European Periphery," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 31(2), pages 273-294, April.
    2. Borio, Claudio, 2013. "On Time, Stocks and Flows: Understanding the Global Macroeconomic Challenges," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 225, pages 3-13, August.
    3. Evans, Martin, 2013. "Global Imbalances, Risk, and the Great Recession," MPRA Paper 52363, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Valentina Bruno & Hyun Song Shin, 2014. "Assessing Macroprudential Policies: Case of South Korea," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 116(1), pages 128-157, January.
    5. Federico Maria Ferrara & Jörg S Haas & Andrew Peterson & Thomas Sattler, 2022. "Exports vs. Investment: How Public Discourse Shapes Support for External Imbalances," Post-Print hal-02569351, HAL.
    6. Marek Jarociński & Bartosz Maćkowiak, 2014. "Choosing variables in macroeconomic modelling," Research Bulletin, European Central Bank, vol. 20, pages 5-8.
    7. Evans, Martin D.D., 2014. "External balances, trade flows and financial conditions," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(PB), pages 271-290.
    8. Paolo D’Imperio & Waltraud Schelkle, 2017. "What Difference Would a Capital Markets Union Make for Risk-Sharing in the EU?," Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung / Quarterly Journal of Economic Research, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research, vol. 86(2), pages 77-88.
    9. Gaulier, G. & Vicard, V., 2012. "Évolution des déséquilibres courants dans la zone euro : choc de compétitivité ou choc de demande ?," Bulletin de la Banque de France, Banque de France, issue 189, pages 47-64.
    10. Curcuru, Stephanie E. & Thomas, Charles P. & Warnock, Francis E., 2013. "On returns differentials," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 1-25.
    11. Douglas Sutherland & Peter Hoeller, 2012. "Debt and Macroeconomic Stability: An Overview of the Literature and Some Empirics," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 1006, OECD Publishing.
    12. Alexey Mikhaylov & Hasan Dinçer & Serhat Yüksel, 2023. "Analysis of financial development and open innovation oriented fintech potential for emerging economies using an integrated decision-making approach of MF-X-DMA and golden cut bipolar q-ROFSs," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 9(1), pages 1-34, December.
    13. Thomas Piketty & Gabriel Zucman, 2014. "Capital is Back: Wealth-Income Ratios in Rich Countries 1700–2010," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(3), pages 1255-1310.
    14. Annamaria de Crescenzio & Etienne Lepers, 2021. "Extreme capital flow episodes from the Global Financial Crisis to COVID-19: An exploration with monthly data," OECD Working Papers on International Investment 2021/05, OECD Publishing.
    15. Stefan Avdjiev & Bryan Hardy & Şebnem Kalemli-Özcan & Luis Servén, 2022. "Gross Capital Flows by Banks, Corporates, and Sovereigns," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 20(5), pages 2098-2135.
    16. Mr. Jorge A Chan-Lau, 2020. "UnFEAR: Unsupervised Feature Extraction Clustering with an Application to Crisis Regimes Classification," IMF Working Papers 2020/262, International Monetary Fund.
    17. Carvalho, Daniel, 2020. "Leverage and valuation effects: How global liquidity shapes sectoral balance sheets," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    18. Brunnermeier, Markus & De Gregorio, José & Eichengreen, Barry & El-Erian, Mohamed & Fraga, Arminio & Ito, Takatoshi & Lane, Philip R. & Pisani-Ferry, Jean & Prasad, Eswar & Rajan, Raghuram & Ramos, Ma, 2012. "Banks and cross-border capital flows: challenges and regulatory responses," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 102439, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    19. Gustavo Adler & Mr. Daniel Garcia-Macia & Signe Krogstrup, 2019. "The Measurement of External Accounts," IMF Working Papers 2019/132, International Monetary Fund.
    20. Stefan Avdjiev & Mary Everett & Philip R Lane & Hyun Song Shin, 2018. "Tracking the international footprints of global firms," BIS Quarterly Review, Bank for International Settlements, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eso:journl:v:50:y:2019:i:1:p:77-102. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Aedin Doris (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.esr.ie .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.