Global current account imbalances were a major subject of concern in the years before the recent financial crisis. It is shown that the expected (negative) equilibrium relationship between net foreign assets and the trade balance that had held in the previous twenty years appeared to break down...

Im Rahmen der Diskussion, wie die wirtschaftlichen Schwierigkeiten Europas, insbesondere der Eurozone, zu bewältigen sind, wurde die Forderung nach einem Abbau von Leistungsbilanzüberschüssen laut. Nach Ansicht von Rolf J. Langhammer, Institut für Weltwirtschaft, Kiel, spricht vieles dafür,...

This paper examines three different explanations of the global financial imbalances. It begins with the neoliberal globalization hypothesis that explains the imbalances as the product of the model of globalization implemented over the past thirty years. It then examines the saving glut and...

We study trade imbalances between world countries in the period 1960-2000 using a complex-network approach. We show that trade imbalances in absolute value are characterized by a hierarchical arrangement wherein few rich economies display high clustering and carry an important amount of...