Imperfect capital mobility is modelled in a two-country intertemporal general equilibrium framework by assuming that agents face costs of adjusting asset stocks in foreign asset markets. Goods markets are imperfectly competitive and goods prices are subject to sluggish adjustment. Simulation...

We discuss sources of volatility and vulnerability in the CEECs during the transition and leading up to EU accession. The Paper emphasizes the role of the transition shock as a source of extreme volatility on a much larger scale than the one observed during crises in emerging markets. The low...

In this lecture I document the proliferation of gross international asset and liability positions and discuss some of the consequences for individual countries’ external adjustment processes and for global financial stability. In light of the rapid growth of gross global financial flows and...

This paper analyzes current stresses in the two key areas that concerned the architects of the original Bretton Woods system: international liquidity and exchange rate management. Despite radical changes since World War II in the market context for liquidity and exchange rate concerns, they...

Before the crisis, there were strong arguments for reducing global imbalances. As a result of the crisis, there have been significant changes in saving and investment patterns across the world and imbalances have narrowed considerably. Does this mean that imbalances are a problem of the past?...

The surge in international asset trade since the early 1990s has lead to renewed interest in models with international portfolio choice, an aspect that was largely cast aside when the ad-hoc portfolio balance models of the 1970s were replaced by models of optimizing agents. We develop the...

We show that the when one takes into account the global equilibrium ramifications of an unwinding of the US current account deficit, currently running at more than 6% of GDP, the potential collapse of the dollar becomes considerably larger than our previous estimates (Obstfeld and Rogoff 2000a)...

This paper studies the effects of demand and supply shocks in the global crude oil market on several measures of countries’ external balance, including the oil trade balance, the non-oil trade balance, the current account and changes in net foreign assets (NFA) during 1975–2004. We...

We analyse the impact of financial globalization on asset prices, investment and the possibility of crashes driven by self-fulfilling expectations in emerging markets. In a two-country model with one emerging market (intermediate income level) and one industrialized country (high income level),...