TY  - JOUR
AU  - Leonard,Greg
AU  - Stockman,Alan C.
TI  - Current Accounts and Exchange Rates: A New Look at the Evidence
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 8361
PY  - 2001
Y2  - July 2001
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8361
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8361.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Alan C. Stockman
Department of Economics
University of Rochester
Rochester, NY  14627-0156
Tel: 585/275-7214
Fax: 585/256-2309
E-Mail: N/A user is deceased
AB  - This paper 'goes back to basics' in empirical analysis of the J-Curve.  First, we document strong violations in the distributional assumptions that underlie nearly all previous work on this issue.  Second, we employ distribution-free, non-parametric statistical tests to characterize the data and summarize the key relationships between real exchange rates, the current account, and real GDP.  We find some (weak) evidence of a J-Curve in the data.  Interestingly, however, we document that this evidence is not consistent with the standard theoretical explanation of the J-Curve.  Consequently, our empirical results pose a strong challenge for international economic theory.
ER  -