10.07.2024

The paper "Retained earnings, foreign portfolio ownership, and the German current account: A firm-level approach" suggests a framework to correct for a misleading attribution of corporate savings and applies this concept to Germany. For the years 2012–2020, the corrections retrospectively reduce German savings and consequently the German current account surplus by, on average, €11.5 bn annually. This amounts to lowering Germany’s average official current account surplus (€226.6 bn) across these years by approximately five percent. See https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/ger-2023-0065/html