Anmerkungen:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments January 9, 2008 erstellt
Beschreibung:
An influential explanation for the recent rise in the U.S. current account deficit is the boom in U.S. productivity. As U.S. productivity surged in the mid-1990s, capital was attracted to the U.S. to take advantage of the higher real returns. Using a two country general equilibrium model, this paper quantitatively shows that the gap in productivity growth between the U.S. and the quot;rest of the worldquot; cannot explain the U.S. current account deficits, especially in the 1980s and the 2000s. This is because on a GDP-weighted basis, the quot;rest of the worldquot; actually had higher productivity growth during these periods, and standard macroeconomic models would predict an outflow of funds from the U.S. to the rest of the world, and a consequent U.S. current account surplus. We show that changes in global financial integration can help explain this anomaly in U.S. current account behavior