G-20 Agenda and Reform of the International Financial Architecture: an Asia-Pacific Perspective

Global macroeconomic imbalances are among the key issues facing policymakers, especially in the US and China which are the two major affected / contributing parties. While there has been a great deal of discussion and disagreement on this important issue, what all sides have in common is the general failure to adequately pay attention to the role of the exchange rate in allocating resources internally between tradables and nontradables. These sectoral changes can have both real and macroeconomic consequences. This paper offers a simple analytical exposition of some of the issues relating to China’s and East Asian development and their impact on global imbalances using a two-sector tradable and nontradables model.