{"id":1229269,"name":"Average absolute current account balances (15 countries, as a % of GDP)","unit":"%","description":"The IMF data has been transformed to be comparable to the Obstfeld and Taylor data. First we take data from 15 countries on current account balances (as a % of GDP). Next, we take the absolute value of each country-year combination. Lastly, we average the absolute current account balances as a % of GDP of the 15 countries in the sample in 5 year blocks.","createdAt":"2026-05-12T11:24:59.000Z","updatedAt":"2026-05-13T05:24:55.000Z","coverage":"","timespan":"1872-2017","datasetId":7903,"columnOrder":0,"shortName":"average_absolute_current_account_balances__15_countries__as_a_pct_of_gdp","catalogPath":"grapher/core_econ/2020-07-29/te_18_8/te_18_8#average_absolute_current_account_balances__15_countries__as_a_pct_of_gdp","type":"float","dataChecksum":"3700785416774654754","metadataChecksum":"7869455385520051779","datasetName":"TE-18.8","datasetVersion":"2020-07-29","nonRedistributable":false,"display":{"unit":"%"},"schemaVersion":2,"presentation":{},"dimensions":{"years":{"values":[{"id":1872},{"id":1877},{"id":1882},{"id":1887},{"id":1892},{"id":1897},{"id":1902},{"id":1907},{"id":1912},{"id":1917},{"id":1922},{"id":1927},{"id":1932},{"id":1937},{"id":1942},{"id":1947},{"id":1952},{"id":1957},{"id":1962},{"id":1967},{"id":1972},{"id":1977},{"id":1982},{"id":1987},{"id":1992},{"id":1997},{"id":2002},{"id":2007},{"id":2012},{"id":2017}]},"entities":{"values":[{"id":355,"name":"World","code":"OWID_WRL"}]}},"origins":[{"id":15030,"title":"Global capital markets and IMF World Economic Outlook Database","description":"The data shown in the figure is the average absolute current account balance (as a percentage of GDP) for 15 countries in five-year blocks (from 1870–74 through to 2015–19). The countries in the sample are Argentina, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, UK, US. The 2018 data for Finland, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, the United States and the 2019 data for all countries are IMF estimates.","producer":"Obstfeld and Taylor, and International Monetary Fund","citationFull":"Figure 2.2 from Maurice Obstfeld and Alan M. Taylor. 2005. Global Capital Markets: Integration, Crisis, and Growth (Japan-US Center UFJ Bank Monographs on International Financial Markets). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; International Monetary Fund (2020) World Economic Outlook Database.","attributionShort":"IMF","urlMain":"https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2019/01/weodata/index.aspx","dateAccessed":"2020-07-29","datePublished":"2020"}]}