Are US current account deficits unsustainable? Testing for the private and government intertemporal budget constraints

Abstract

This paper re-examines whether the huge external deficits in the United States for the last few decades are sustainable by using time series methods. Two distinct analytical differences from earlier works are considered. First, the private sector and government are separated to construct the current account identities used in this paper. Second, both the necessary and sufficient conditions for the sustainability of external deficits are explicitly considered. Taking these modifications into consideration, the empirical results of this study do not necessarily reject the hypothesis that external deficits in the US are sustainable. © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.