The available data suggest that the current accounts of developing and emerging-market economies swung a further $ billion into surplus in 2004. This remarkable change in the current account balances of developing countries raises at least three questions. First, what events or factors induced this change?
Second, what causal relationship (if any) exists between this change and current-account developments in the United States and in other industrial countries? Third, to the extent that the movement toward surplus in developing-country current accounts has had a differential impact on the United States relative to other industrial countries, what accounts for the difference?