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The long-run determinants of U.S. external imbalances

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Andrea Ferrero

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Abstract

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 (1) productivity growth differentials are the main driving force at high frequencies, (2) the different evolution of demographic factors across countries accounts for a large portion of the long-run trend, and (3) fiscal policy plays, at best, a minor role. The main prediction of the analysis is that among industrialized countries, capital should generally be expected to flow toward relatively young and rapidly growing economies. In addition, the paper shows that international demographic trends might be partly responsible for the recent declining pattern of the world real interest rate and therefore shed new light on the real side of the interest rate conundrum.

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Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of New York in its series Staff Reports with number 295.

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Date of creation: 2007
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Handle: RePEc:fip:fednsr:295

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Keywords: Capital movements ; Productivity ; Demography ; Fiscal policy ; Interest rates;

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References listed on IDEAS
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  2. Elmendorf, Douglas W. & Gregory Mankiw, N., 1999. "Government debt," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 25, pages 1615-1669 Elsevier. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  3. Blanchard, Olivier J, 1985. "Debt, Deficits, and Finite Horizons," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(2), pages 223-47, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  14. Enrique G. Mendoza & Vincenzo Quadrini & Jose-Victor Rios-Rull, 2007. "Financial Integration, Financial Deepness and Global Imbalances," NBER Working Papers 12909, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  17. Christopher J. Erceg & Luca Guerrieri & Christopher Gust, 2005. "Expansionary Fiscal Shocks and the US Trade Deficit," International Finance, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 8(3), pages 363-397, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  22. Orazio Attanasio & Sagiri Kitao & Giovanni L. Violante, 2006. "Quantifying the Effects of the Demographic Transition in Developing Economies," Advances in Macroeconomics, Berkeley Electronic Press, vol. 6(1), pages 1298-1298. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
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  1. Andrea Ferrero & Mark Gertler & Lars E.O. Svensson, 2008. "Current Account Dynamics and Monetary Policy," NBER Working Papers 13906, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  2. Charles Engel & John H. Rogers, 2008. "Expected consumption growth from cross-country surveys: implications for assessing international capital markets," International Finance Discussion Papers 949, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
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