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Discussion Paper
Foreign Borrowing in the Euro Area Periphery: The End Is Near
Current account deficits in euro area periphery countries have now largely disappeared. This represents a substantial adjustment. Only two years ago, deficits stood at nearly 10 percent of GDP in Greece and Portugal and 5 percent in Spain and Italy (see chart below). This sharp narrowing means that spending has been brought in line with income, largely righting an imbalance that had left these countries dependent on heavy foreign borrowing. However, adjustment has come at a sizable cost to growth, with lower domestic spending only partly offset by higher export sales. Downward pressure on ...
Report
Macroeconomic Volatility and External Imbalances
Does macroeconomic volatility/uncertainty affect accumulation of net foreign assets? In OECD economies over the period 1970-2012, changes in country specific aggregate volatility are, after controlling for a wide array of factors, significantly positively associated with net foreign asset position. An increase in volatility (measured as the standard deviation of GDP growth) of 0.5% over period of 10 years is associated with an increase in the net foreign assets of around 8% of GDP. A standard open economy model with time varying aggregate uncertainty can quantitatively account for this ...
Discussion Paper
Falling Oil Prices and Global Saving
The rise in oil prices from near $30 per barrel in 2000 to around $110 per barrel in mid-2014 was a dramatic reallocation of global income to oil producers. So what did oil producers do with this bounty? Trade data show that they spent about half of the increase in total export revenues on imports and the other half to buy foreign assets. The drop in oil prices will unwind this process. Oil-importing countries will gain from lower oil bills, but they will also see a decline in their exports to oil-producing countries and in purchases of their assets by investors in these countries. Indeed, ...
Discussion Paper
Japan’s Missing Wall of Money
The Bank of Japan announced an open-ended asset purchase program in January 2013 and an unexpectedly ramped-up version of the program was implemented in early April. Market commentary at that time suggested that flooding the economy with liquidity would lead to a “wall of money” flowing out of Japan in search of higher yields, affecting asset prices worldwide. So far, however, Japan’s wall of money remains missing in action, with no pickup in Japanese foreign investment since the April policy shift. Why is this? Here we explain that while economic theory does not offer clear guidance on ...
Working Paper
The Domestic and International Effects of Interstate U.S. Banking
This paper studies the domestic and international effects of national bank market integration in a two-country, dynamic, stochastic, general equilibrium model with endogenous producer entry. Integration of banking across localities reduces the degree of local monopoly power of financial intermediaries. The economy that implements this form of deregulation experiences increased producer entry, real exchange rate appreciation, and a current account deficit. The foreign economy experiences a long-run increase in GDP and consumption. Less monopoly power in financial intermediation results in less ...
Working Paper
A Theory of the Global Financial Cycle
We develop a theory to account for changes in prices of risky and safe assets and gross and net capital flows over the global financial cycle (GFC). The multi-country model features global risk-aversion shocks and heterogeneity of investors both within and across countries. Within-country heterogeneity is needed to account for the drop in gross capital flows during a negative GFC shock (higher global risk-aversion). Cross-country heterogeneity is needed to account for the differential vulnerability of countries to a negative GFC shock. The key vulnerability is associated with leverage. In ...
Report
The End of Privilege: A Reexamination of the Net Foreign Asset Position of the United States
The US net foreign asset position has deteriorated sharply since 2007 and is currently negative 65 percent of US GDP. This deterioration primarily reflects changes in the relative values of large gross international equity positions, as opposed to net new borrowing. In particular, a sharp increase in equity prices that has been US-specific has inflated the value of US foreign liabilities. We develop an international macro finance model to interpret these trends, and we argue that the rise in equity prices in the United States likely reflects rising profitability of domestic firms rather than ...
Discussion Paper
What Is the Outlook for China’s External Surplus?
The sharp slowdown in China’s property sector has reignited debate over the country’s future role as a net provider of savings to the global economy. The debate revolves around whether a sustained decline in property investment will spur a long-term increase in China’s current account surplus, given the country’s high savings rate. However, China’s rapidly aging population presents opposing forces that complicate this story. The shift of a large share of its population from working life to retirement will reduce savings supply even as a shrinking labor force will reduce investment ...
Working Paper
A Theory of Gross and Net Capital Flows over the Global Financial Cycle
We develop a theory to account for changes in gross and net capital flows over the global financial cycle (GFC). The theory relies critically on portfolio heterogeneity among investors within and across countries, related to risky portfolio shares and portfolio shares allocated to foreign assets. A global drop in risky asset prices during a downturn of the GFC changes relative wealth within and across countries due to portfolio heterogeneity. This leads to changes in gross and net capital flows that are consistent with the stylized facts: all countries experience a decline in gross capital ...
Working Paper
A Theory of Net Capital Flows over the Global Financial Cycle
We develop a theory to account for changes in net capital flows of safe and risky assets over the global financial cycle. We show empirically that countries that have a net debt of safe assets experience a rise in net outflows of safe assets (reduced accumulation of safe debt) during a downturn in the global financial cycle. This is accomplished through a rise in total net outflows and a drop in net outflows of risky assets. We develop a multi-country portfolio choice model that can account for these facts. The theory relies on cross-country heterogeneity in the share of an investor's ...