IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bis/biswps/424.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Global and euro imbalances: China and Germany

Author

Listed:
  • Guonan Ma
  • Robert N McCauley

Abstract

We analyse global and euro area imbalances by focusing on China and Germany as large surplus and creditor countries. In the 2000s, domestic reforms in both countries expanded the effective labour force, restrained wages, shifted income towards profits and increased corporate saving. As a result, both economies' current account surpluses widened before the global financial crisis, and that of Germany has proven more persistent as domestic investment has remained subdued.

Suggested Citation

  • Guonan Ma & Robert N McCauley, 2013. "Global and euro imbalances: China and Germany," BIS Working Papers 424, Bank for International Settlements.
    • Handle: RePEc:bis:biswps:424
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.bis.org/publ/work424.pdf
    File Function: Full PDF document
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.bis.org/publ/work424.htm
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Maurice Obstfeld, 2012. "Does the Current Account Still Matter?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(3), pages 1-23, May.
    2. Jorg Bibow, 2012. "The Euro Debt Crisis and Germany's Euro Trilemma," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_721, Levy Economics Institute.
    3. Charles P. Kindleberger & Robert Z. Aliber, 2005. "Manias, Panics and Crashes," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, edition 0, number 978-0-230-62804-5, December.
    4. International Monetary Fund, 2011. "Chile: Staff Report for the 2011 Article IV Consultation," IMF Staff Country Reports 2011/260, International Monetary Fund.
    5. Curcuru, Stephanie E. & Thomas, Charles P. & Warnock, Francis E., 2013. "On returns differentials," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 1-25.
    6. Joshua Aizenman & Rajeswari Sengupta, 2011. "Global Imbalances: Is Germany the New China? A Skeptical View," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 387-400, July.
    7. Beblavý,Miroslav & Cobham,David & Ódor,L'udovít (ed.), 2011. "The Euro Area and the Financial Crisis," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107014749, October.
    8. Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti, & Philip R. Lane, 2003. "International Financial Integration," The Institute for International Integration Studies Discussion Paper Series iiisdp03, IIIS.
    9. Bernanke, B.S., 2011. "International capital flows and the returns to safe assets in the United States 2003-2007," Financial Stability Review, Banque de France, issue 15, pages 13-26, February.
    10. Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas & Helene Rey & Nicolas Govillot, 2010. "Exorbitant Privilege and Exorbitant Duty," IMES Discussion Paper Series 10-E-20, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan.
    11. Lane, Philip R. & Milesi-Ferretti, Gian Maria, 2007. "The external wealth of nations mark II: Revised and extended estimates of foreign assets and liabilities, 1970-2004," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 223-250, November.
    12. Gros, Daniel & Mayer, Thomas, 2012. "A Sovereign Wealth Fund to Lift Germany�s Curse of Excess Savings," CEPS Papers 7229, Centre for European Policy Studies.
    13. Guonan Ma & Wang Yi, 2010. "China’s High Saving Rate: Myth and Reality," International Economics, CEPII research center, issue 122, pages 5-39.
    14. Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas & Hélène Rey, 2007. "From World Banker to World Venture Capitalist: US External Adjustment and the Exorbitant Privilege," NBER Chapters, in: G7 Current Account Imbalances: Sustainability and Adjustment, pages 11-66, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Habib, Maurizio Michael, 2010. "Excess returns on net foreign assets: the exorbitant privilege from a global perspective," Working Paper Series 1158, European Central Bank.
    16. Lane, Philip & Milesi-Ferretti, Gian Maria, "undated". "External Wealth of Nations," Instructional Stata datasets for econometrics extwealth, Boston College Department of Economics.
    17. Jörg Bibow & Andrea Terzi (ed.), 2007. "Euroland and the World Economy," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-0-230-37755-4, December.
    18. Guonan Ma & Robert McCauley & Lillie Lam, 2013. "The Roles of Saving, Investment and the Renminbi in Rebalancing the Chinese Economy," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(1), pages 72-84, February.
    19. Salant, Stephen W & Henderson, Dale W, 1978. "Market Anticipations of Government Policies and the Price of Gold," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 86(4), pages 627-648, August.
    20. Ma, Guonan & McCauley, Robert N., 2013. "Is China or India more financially open?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 6-27.
    21. Olivier Blanchard & Francesco Giavazzi, 2002. "Current Account Deficits in the Euro Area: The End of the Feldstein Horioka Puzzle?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 33(2), pages 147-210.
    22. Claudio Borio & Piti Disyatat, 2011. "Global imbalances and the financial crisis: Link or no link?," BIS Working Papers 346, Bank for International Settlements.
    23. Hyun Song Shin, 2012. "Global Banking Glut and Loan Risk Premium," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 60(2), pages 155-192, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Stefan Behrendt, 2014. "The Fiscal Compact and Current Account Patterns in Europe," Global Financial Markets Working Paper Series 2014-52, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    2. Claudio Borio & Harold James & Hyun Song Shin, 2014. "The international monetary and financial system: a capital account historical perspective," BIS Working Papers 457, Bank for International Settlements.
    3. Storm, Servaas & Naastepad, C.W.M., 2015. "Crisis and recovery in the German economy: The real lessons," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 11-24.
    4. Servaas Storm & C.W.M. Naastepad, 2015. "NAIRU economics and the Eurozone crisis," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(6), pages 843-877, November.
    5. Wijngaards, Indy & Hendriks, Martijn & Burger, Martijn J., 2019. "Steering towards happiness: An experience sampling study on the determinants of happiness of truck drivers," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 131-148.
    6. Kalair, A. & Abas, N. & Khan, N., 2016. "Comparative study of HVAC and HVDC transmission systems," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 1653-1675.
    7. Claudio Borio, 2014. "The international monetary and financial system: its Achilles heel and what to do about it," Globalization Institute Working Papers 203, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    8. Servaas Storm & C.W.M. Naastepad, 2015. "Crisis and Recovery in the German Economy: The Real Lessons," Working Papers Series 10, Institute for New Economic Thinking.
    9. Rainer Frey & Ulrich Grosch & Alexander Lipponer, 2014. "Fallstricke bei der Bestimmung von Vermögensverlusten deutscher Anleger im Ausland," Wirtschaftsdienst, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 94(11), pages 806-812, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gourinchas, Pierre-Olivier & Rey, Hélène, 2014. "External Adjustment, Global Imbalances, Valuation Effects," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 585-645, Elsevier.
    2. Thomas A. Knetsch & Arne J. Nagengast, 2017. "Penny wise and pound foolish? On the income from Germany’s foreign investments," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 153(4), pages 753-778, November.
    3. Rogoff, Kenneth S. & Tashiro, Takeshi, 2015. "Japan’s exorbitant privilege," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 43-61.
    4. McCauley, Robert N., 2015. "Does the US dollar confer an exorbitant privilege?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 1-14.
    5. van Hombeeck, Carlos Eduardo, 2020. "An exorbitant privilege in the first age of international financial integration?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    6. Mileva, Mariya, 2015. "Valuation effects and long-run real exchange rate dynamics," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 390-408.
    7. Devereux, Michael B. & Saito, Makoto & Yu, Changhua, 2020. "International capital flows, portfolio composition, and the stability of external imbalances," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    8. Philip Lane, 2013. "Financial Globalisation and the Crisis," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 555-580, July.
    9. Ricardo J. Caballero & Alp Simsek, 2020. "A Model of Fickle Capital Flows and Retrenchment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(6), pages 2288-2328.
    10. Rogoff, Kenneth S. & Tashiro, Takeshi, 2015. "Japan’s exorbitant privilege," Scholarly Articles 34299169, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    11. Fiedler, Salomon & Görg, Holger & Hornok, Cecília & Jannsen, Nils & Kooths, Stefan & Marchal, Léa & Potjagailo, Galina, 2018. "Direktinvestitionen im Ausland - Effekte auf die deutsche Leistungsbilanz und Spillovers in den Empfängerländern," Kieler Beiträge zur Wirtschaftspolitik 16, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    12. Al-Saffar, Yaser & Ridinger, Wolfgang & Whitaker, Simon, 2015. "Financial Stability Paper No 24: The role of external balance sheets in the financial crisis," Bank of England Financial Stability Papers 24, Bank of England.
    13. Herrmann, Sabine & Kleinert, Jörn, 2014. "Lucas paradox and allocation puzzle: Is the euro area different?," Discussion Papers 06/2014, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    14. Broner, Fernando & Didier, Tatiana & Schmukler, Sergio L. & von Peter, Goetz, 2023. "Bilateral international investments: The big sur?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    15. Cavallo, Eduardo & Powell, Andrew & Pedemonte, Mathieu & Tavella, Pilar, 2015. "A new taxonomy of Sudden Stops: Which Sudden Stops should countries be most concerned about?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 47-70.
    16. D.D. Evans, Martin, 2017. "External balances, trade and financial conditions," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 165-184.
    17. Kumhof, Michael & Sokol, Andrej & Rungcharoenkitkul, Phurichai, 2020. "How Does International Capital Flow?," CEPR Discussion Papers 15526, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Bergant, Katharina, 2021. "The role of stock-flow adjustment during the global financial crisis," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    19. Philip R. Lane, 2013. "Growth And Adjustment Challenges For The Euro Area," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 44(2), pages 273-295.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Global imbalances; current account; capital account; saving and investment; international assets and liabilities; distribution of income; world banker;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration
    • F32 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Current Account Adjustment; Short-term Capital Movements

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bis:biswps:424. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Martin Fessler (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bisssch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.