Many claim that fluctuations in US private savings help to create and to sustain global imbalances because of their influence on the current account deficit. To test this claim, this paper investigates the determinants of aggregate household savings using a panel of 18 developed countries for...

I estimate the effect of U.S. government spending and tax shocks on Canada, Japan, and the U.K. for the period 1974 through 2007. Spending and tax shocks are identified using sign restrictions on the impulse responses from a vector autoregression (VAR). I find that while spillover effects of...

I investigate the transmission of U.S. stock price shocks to real activity and prices in G-7 countries using a multicountry vector autoregressive (VAR) model. I achieve identification by imposing a small number of sign restrictions on impulse responses, while controlling for monetary policy,...

This paper studies how changing expectations concerning future trade and financial con- ditions are reflected in international external positions. In the absence of Ponzi schemes and arbitrage opportunities, the net foreign asset position of any country must, as a matter of theory, equal the...

This paper examines the role of rising housing prices and borrowing constraints as determinants of China's high household saving rate, especially among young households. Using a life-cycle model of saving behavior in the presence of borrowing constraints, we show that the relationship between...

Since the mid-1990s, we observe a global increase of current account imbalances. In 2007, before the climax of the financial crisis, they reached 2% of world GDP in absolute value. At the global level, the persistence of large current account imbalances is a threat to the macroeconomic and...

There is a widespread consensus that China’s growth paradigm needs a rebalancing away from investment and external demand and towards consumption and domestic demand. This rebalancing process is supposed to be accompanied by the transition towards Renminbi’s full convertibility. In contrast,...

This paper describes a new analytical framework for the quantitative assessment of international external positions. The framework links each country’s current net foreign asset position to its current trade flows, forecasts of future trade flows, and expectations concerning future returns on...

The reduction of global imbalances observed during the climax of crisis is incomplete. In this context, currencies realignments are still proposed to ensure global macroeconomic stability. These realignments are based on equilibrium rates derived from equilibrium exchange rate models. Among...

The paper presents a general empirical method of distance-based multifaceted systematic identifying of the positions of countries in relation to inequalities and imbalances. In order to understand the world economic relations in their entirety, we decided to analyze twelve most populous...