When working with the balances ... you can just add them. A capital transaction outflow from one Eurozone nation that is an inflow to another will show up as a + in one balance and a - in the other, so when the balances are added up, it drops out.

When working at the individual accounts, you need to sum the individual accounts and then subtract the sum of the corresponding account for each bilateral flows within a group, to work out a set of balance of payments for a given bloc.

If bilateral flows of each member of the Eurozone have already been grouped to give a figure "to other Eurozone nations", that simplifies that second process substantially.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.