An Assessment of the Current Account Sustainability in Romania – An Inter-temporal Perspective

This paper assesses the sustainability of the CA deficit in Romania by estimating its structural component, based on an inter-temporal perspective. Using a large sample of panel data, we estimated long term relationships for the CA deficit and its fundamentals. The main conclusion of the paper is that there is an excessive CA deficit which should be adjusted. The results are showing that the structural CA could range between 6.3% and 10.9% of GDP, depending on the model used and the econometric procedure. Another important result of the paper is that the main drivers of the CA deficit in Romania, as well for other transition countries of Europe, are the economic convergence factors.

Keywords: structural CA deficit, convergence, relative income, Ricardian equivalence
JEL Classification: F15, F32, F37, F41