The Pessimists and the Optimists disagree whether the US external deficits and the associated buildup of US net foreign liabilities are problems that require urgent attention. A warning signal should be that the debt ratio deviates significantly from the optimal ratio. The optimal debt ratio or...

This paper studies the impact of international capital flows on asset prices through risk premia. We investigate whether foreign purchases of U.S. Treasury securities significantly contributed to the decline in excess returns on long-term bonds between 1995 and 2008. We run forecasting...

Sustained large U.S. current account deficits have led some economists and policymakers to worry that future current account adjustment could occur through a sudden and disruptive depreciation of the dollar and a sharp drop in U.S. consumption. Two factors that, to date, have cast doubt on such...

Differences in financial systems are often named as a prime candidate for the current state of global imbalances. This paper argues that the process of capital liberalization can explain a substantial fraction of the US net external liabilities. We present a simple two-country model with an...

In this paper, I claim that there are sound theoretical and empirical reasons to believe that the valuation channel is unimportant for the sustainability of the American international debt, in spite of the role it plays in the adjustment dynamics of the external imbalances. First, I observe that...

There is no consensus in the empirical literature on the direction in which U.S. monetary policy affects cross-border bank lending. We find robust evidence that the impact of the U.S. federal funds rate on cross-border bank lending in a given period depends on the prevailing international...

The paper analyses the global spillovers of the Federal Reserve's unconventional monetary policy measures since 2007. First, we find that Fed measures in the early phase of the crisis (QE1), but not since 2010 (QE2), were highly effective in lowering sovereign yields and raising equity markets...

The paper analyses the global spillovers of the Federal Reserve's unconventional monetary policy measures. First, we find that Fed measures in the early phase of the crisis (QE1) were highly effective in lowering sovereign yields and raising equity markets, especially in the US relative to other...

Official holdings of US dollar reserves are partly invested outside the United States. These offshore investments do not strictly speaking finance the US current account, but do support the US dollar. Offshore holdings grow fast when intervention is large

Differences in financial systems are often named as a prime candidate for the current state of global imbalances. This paper argues that the process of capital liberalization can explain a substantial fraction of the US net external liabilities. We present a simple two-country model with an...