Biographical note: Michael Pettis is professor of finance and economics at Peking University, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment, and a widely read commentator on China, Europe, and the global economy. He is the author of "The Volatility Machine: Emerging Economies and the Threat of...

China's economic growth is sputtering, the Euro is under threat, and the United States is combating serious trade disadvantages. Another Great Depression? Not quite. Noted economist and China expert Michael Pettis argues instead that we are undergoing a critical rebalancing of the world...

Some believe in the "Thucydides Trap": the idea that, since a rising power will challenge the dominance of an established one, a China-U.S. trade war will be inevitable. Being the largest and the second largest trading nations globally, the U.S. and China are in fact each other's most important...

This paper examines the persistent deterioration in the international external position of the U.S. over the past 60 years. I develop a model without Ponzi schemes and arbitrage opportunities that accounts for both the secular rise and the cyclical variations in the U.S. international debt...