This paper examines the roles of U.S. financial innovation, financial globalization, and the savings glut hypothesis in explaining the rise in U.S. external debt, first in a portfolio balance model, and then empirically. Perhaps surprisingly, financial deepening and falling home bias in...

In the current international monetary system, the adjustment mechanism does not work properly to eliminate the excessive surpluses/deficits on the current accounts of the major countries that participate in international trade. Consequently, the adjustment changes do not take place in an...

In assessing Alexander Swoboda's great influence on economics, two themes stand out: the determinants of global inflation, particularly in the 1970s, and the choice of an exchange rate regime consistent with domestic monetary and fiscal policies. Although seemingly narrowly focused on China, our...

The paper discusses global imbalances under the aspect of an asymmetric world monetary system. It identifies the US and euro area (Germany) as center countries with rising current account deficits (US) and surpluses (Germany) which are matched by respective current account surpluses of...

"The current account can be understood as the outcome of investment decisions made by domestic and foreign investors. These decisions can be decomposed into a portfolio rebalancing and a portfolio growth component. This paper provides empirical evidence of the importance of portfolio rebalancing...