Two separate narratives have emerged in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. One interpretation speaks of private financial excess and the key role of the banking system in leveraging and deleveraging the economy. The other emphasizes the public sector balance sheet over the private and...

This paper discusses Japan's strategy for Asian monetary integration. It argues that Japan faces three major policy challenges when promoting intraregional exchange rate stability. First, there must be some convergence of exchange rate regimes in East Asia, and the most realistic option is for...

The central objective of this paper is to empirically assess how global imbalances have evolved since the global financial crisis of 2008/09. More specifically, we examine how the security investment positions of major East Asian economies in United States (US) financial markets—equities,...

This paper analyzes the conflicting explanations of the global imbalances’ pattern and the size of the US external deficit. In this document, it is argued that, far from being incompatible, the explanations suggested are part of a broader story. The drop of the US saving rate has played a...

The euro crisis was typically presented as excessive fiscal deficits leading to the accumulation of unsustainable public debts. This diagnosis applied most notably in Greece and Italy, but also Portugal and Spain. Implicit in much of the analysis, and occasionally explicit, was the suggestion...

We show that the welfare costs of business cycles in a monetary union can be higher under incomplete financial markets than under complete markets. A monetary union with home bias, sticky prices and country-specific shocks is a second-best environment in which the structure of financial markets...

Based on simulations of an original DGE model of the US and the Chinese economies under various monetary regimes, we show that an overhaul of China's social safety net is capable of reducing global imbalances whatever the exchange-rate regime, provided international capital flows are allowed to...

Since the breakdown of the Bretton Woods System diverging current account positions in Europe have prevailed. While the Southern and Western European countries have tended to run current account deficits, the current accounts of the Central and Northern European countries, in particular Germany,...

Two separate narratives have emerged in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. One interpretation speaks of private financial excess and the key role of the banking system in leveraging and deleveraging the economy. The other emphasizes the public sector balance sheet over the private and...

This paper presents two views of the European sovereign debt crisis. The first is that the South in the euro zone has been fiscally irresponsible, and has failed to implement supply-side policies such as liberalizing labor markets and the market for services. The second view holds that the...