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Discussion Paper
Does a Data Quirk Inflate China’s Travel Services Deficit?
Chinese residents are increasingly traveling to see the rest of the world, logging a total of 162 million foreign visits in 2018, up from 57 million in 2010. Increased travel spending by Chinese residents is acting to reduce the country's trade surplus because such spending is counted as a services import. However, there appears to be a quirk in the Chinese data that results in a significant understatement of the offsetting spending by visitors to China (a services export). According to other Chinese data, this understatement totaled $85 billion in 2018. If so, China's deficit in travel ...
Working Paper
Have Global Value Chains Contributed to Global Imbalances?
Global value chains (GVCs) have grown rapidly over the past several decades. Over the same period, the aggregate value of current account imbalances has risen substantially. This paper looks at whether these developments are related. While there is a sizable literature that has documented the rise of global production networks, there have been few attempts to assess the potential effect on global imbalances. The paper uses measures of GVCs developed in the literature in panel regressions to assess the effect on global imbalances over the period 1995-2011. It is argued that these variables ...