Large uninsured risk, severe borrowing constraints, and rapid income growth can create excessively high household saving rates and large current account surpluses for emerging economies. Therefore, the massive foreign-reserve buildups by China are not necessarily the intended out- come of any...

This paper develops an analytically tractable general-equilibrium model of inventory dynamics based on a precautionary stockout-avoidance motive. The model's predictions are broadly consistent with the U.S. business cycle and key features of inventory behavior. It is also shown that...

The current global-imbalance literature (which explains why capital ows from poor to rich countries) cannot explain China s foreign asset positions because capital cannot ow out of China under capital controls. A related but deeper puzzle that this literature fails to address is China s high...