[工程科技]Towards a Theory of Current Accounts.pdfVIP

NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES TOWARDS A THEORY OF CURRENT ACCOUNTS Jaume Ventura Working Paper 9163 /papers/w9163 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 September 2002 This paper was prepared for a conference in honor of Max Corden, which took place at The Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. on April 2002. I am grateful to Pol Antrás for superb research assistance. The ideas presented here are the outcome of an ongoing research program that Aart Kraay and I have been developing in the last few years. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the National Bureau of Economic Research. © 2002 by Jaume Ventura. All rights reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit, including © notice, is given to the source. Towards a Theory of Current Accounts Jaume Ventura NBER Working Paper No. 9163 September 2002 JEL No. F21, F32 ABSTRACT The current accounts data of industrial countries exhibits some strong patterns that are inconsistent with the intertemporal approach to the current account. This is the basic model that international economists have been using for more than two decades to think about current account issues. This paper shows that it is possible to go a long way towards reconciling the theory and the data by introducing two additional features to the basic model: investment risk and adjustment costs to investment. Moreover, these extensions gen