An anatomy of the Spanish current account adjustment: the role of permanent and transitory factors

This paper investigates how much of the current account adjustment after the global financial crisis in Spain can be explained by cyclical factors. For this purpose, we extend the IMF’s external balance assessment methodology to allow for country-specific slopes and intercepts. The good fit of these cross-country regressions implies negligible residuals for most countries, and, as a result, the positive analysis of current account decompositions provides a more informative assessment of the external balance drivers. According to our findings, around 60% of the 11 pp. adjustment of the Spanish external imbalance over the years 2008–2015 can be explained by transitory factors such as the output gap, the oil balance, and the financial cycle—a share that diminished down to 50% during the more recent recovery period. The remaining adjustment of the Spanish external balance is explained by factors such as the cyclically adjusted fiscal consolidation, population ageing, lower growth expectations, or competitiveness gains, which can all be considered as more permanent phenomena.

FLEKSIBILITAS NILAI TUKAR DAN PENYESUAIAN TRANSAKSI BERJALAN DI INDONESIA: ANALISIS THRESHOLD VAR

Estimation study about the relationship between exchange rate flexibility and current account adjustment has been through three stages, the first stage was analysis of correlation among exchange rates variability (proxied by REER and NEER) and exchange rate regimes classification. The second step was estimating the relationship that the former was mentioned with VAR as benchmark model. The third step was applying the nonlinear estimation with Threshold VAR. The results of analysis showed that exchange rate regime classification may not capture actual exchange rate variability and flexibility exchange rate can accelerate current account adjustment in Indonesia if the changes of Indonesia exchange rate less than 27.7059 (low regime) whereas in high regime exchange rate is persistent increasing so that the system between exchange rate and current account become unstable. Bank Indonesia as monetary authorities must keep the changes of exchange rate less than 27.7059, due to exchange rate can affect current account adjustment, so can anticipate if there is current account deficit in Indonesia economy. Keywords : Exchange Rate Flexibility, Current Account Adjustment, Exchange Rate Regime, Classification, Threshold VAR

FLEKSIBILITAS NILAI TUKAR DAN PENYESUAIAN TRANSAKSI BERJALAN DI INDONESIA: ANALISIS THRESHOLD VAR

Estimation study about the relationship between exchange rate flexibility and current account adjustment has been through three stages, the first stage was analysis of correlation among exchange rates variability (proxied by REER and NEER) and exchange rate regimes classification. The second step was estimating the relationship that the former was mentioned with VAR as benchmark model. The third step was applying the nonlinear estimation with Threshold VAR. The results of analysis showed that exchange rate regime classification may not capture actual exchange rate variability and flexibility exchange rate can accelerate current account adjustment in Indonesia if the changes of Indonesia exchange rate less than 27.7059 (low regime) whereas in high regime exchange rate is persistent increasing so that the system between exchange rate and current account become unstable. Bank Indonesia as monetary authorities must keep the changes of exchange rate less than 27.7059, due to exchange rate can affect current account adjustment, so can anticipate if there is current account deficit in Indonesia economy. Keywords : Exchange Rate Flexibility, Current Account Adjustment, Exchange Rate Regime, Classification, Threshold VAR