This paper extends the model of Engler et al. (2007) on the adjustment of the US current account to a three-country world economy. This allows an analysis of the differential impact of a reversal of the US current account on Europe and Asia. In particular, the outcomes under different exchange...

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) estimates the return on investments of foreign subsidiaries of U.S. multinational companies over the period 1982-2006 averaged 9.4 percent annually after taxes; U.S. subsidiaries of foreign multinationals averaged only 3.2 percent. Two factors distort...

This paper develops a tractable two-country model with life-cycle structure to investigate analytically and quantitatively three potential determinants of the U.S. external imbalances in the last three decades: productivity growth, demographic factors, and fiscal policy. The results suggest that...

From 1960-2009, the U.S. current account balance has tended to decline during expansions and improve in recessions. We argue that trend shocks to productivity can help explain the countercyclical U.S. current account. Our framework is a two-country, two-good real business cycle (RBC) model in...

We use a quantitative equilibrium model with houses, collateralized debt, and foreign borrowing to study the impact of global imbalances on the U.S. economy in the 2000s. Our results suggest that the dynamics of foreign capital flows account for between one-fourth and one-third of the increase...

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...

We analyze the global imbalances and the required adjustments for rebalancing in current accounts and real exchange rates. We set up a two-country two-sector model for the US-China with two asymmetries. First, we assume that the size of China initially is one third of the US but its size becomes...

We use a quantitative equilibrium model with houses, collateralized debt, and foreign borrowing to study the impact of global imbalances on the U.S. economy in the 2000s. Our results suggest that the dynamics of foreign capital flows account for between one-fourth and one-third of the increase...

We study international business cycles and capital flows in the UK, the United States and the Emerging Periphery in the period 1885-1939. Based on the same set of parameters, our model explains current account dynamics under both the Classical Gold Standard and during the Interwar period. We...