IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ste/nystbu/12-09.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Making of America's Imbalances

Author

Listed:
  • Moritz Schularick
  • Paul Wachtel

Abstract

This paper tracks the development of sectoral saving and borrowing in the US economy over the past 50 years. We show that the financial imbalances that erupted in the financial crisis of 2008 were long in the making and preceded the emergence of global imbalances in the 2000s. The record low household savings rate in the past decade was the product of two separate trends: a sharp fall in the asset acquisition of American households in the 1990s, and an explosion of mortgage borrowing in the 2000s. We present novel disaggregated estimates of the wealth effect on savings. We show that households reduce active savings in response to gains in financial wealth and increase borrowing with rising housing wealth. Finally, we argue that the American credit boom of the 2000s had few direct links to reserve accumulation in emerging markets. The mortgage boom was financed by the US financial sector which intermediated foreign funds from private sources.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Moritz Schularick & Paul Wachtel, 2012. "The Making of America's Imbalances," Working Papers 12-09, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:ste:nystbu:12-09
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://w4.stern.nyu.edu/economics/docs/workingpapers/2012/Wachtel_MakingAmericasImbalances_Jul2012.pdf
    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. Maurice Obstfeld & Dongchul Cho & Andrew Mason (ed.), 2012. "Global Economic Crisis," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14951.
    3. Philip R. Lane & Peter McQuade, 2014. "Domestic Credit Growth and International Capital Flows," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 116(1), pages 218-252, January.
    4. F. Thomas Juster & Paul Wachtel, 1972. "Inflation and the Consumer," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 3(1), pages 71-122.
    5. Case Karl E. & Quigley John M. & Shiller Robert J., 2005. "Comparing Wealth Effects: The Stock Market versus the Housing Market," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 5(1), pages 1-34, May.
    6. Alan Greenspan & James Kennedy, 2008. "Sources and uses of equity extracted from homes," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 24(1), pages 120-144, spring.
    7. Aronsson, Thomas & Schöb, Ronnie, 2012. "Adaptation, Anticipation-Bias and Optimal Income Taxation," Umeå Economic Studies 842, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    8. Moritz Schularick & Alan M. Taylor, 2012. "Credit Booms Gone Bust: Monetary Policy, Leverage Cycles, and Financial Crises, 1870-2008," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(2), pages 1029-1061, April.
    9. Case, Karl E. & Quigley, John M. & Shiller, Robert J., 2001. "Comparing Wealth Effects: The Stock Market versus The Housing Market," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt44k6g6vx, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    10. F. Thomas Juster & Joseph P. Lupton & James P. Smith & Frank Stafford, 2006. "The Decline in Household Saving and the Wealth Effect," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(1), pages 20-27, February.
    11. Atif Mian & Amir Sufi, 2011. "House Prices, Home Equity-Based Borrowing, and the US Household Leverage Crisis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(5), pages 2132-2156, August.
    12. Moritz Schularick, 2006. "A tale of two 'globalizations': capital flows from rich to poor in two eras of global finance," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(4), pages 339-354.
    13. Òscar Jordà & Moritz Schularick & Alan M Taylor, 2011. "Financial Crises, Credit Booms, and External Imbalances: 140 Years of Lessons," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 59(2), pages 340-378, June.
    14. John N. Muellbauer, 2007. "Housing, credit and consumer expenditure," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 267-334.
    15. Gorton, Gary & Metrick, Andrew, 2012. "Securitized banking and the run on repo," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(3), pages 425-451.
    16. Obstfeld,Maurice & Taylor,Alan M., 2005. "Global Capital Markets," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521671798, January.
    17. Hetschko, Clemens & Quint, Dominic & Thye, Marius, 2012. "Nationale Schuldenbremsen für die Länder der Europäischen Union: Taugt das deutsche Modell als Vorbild?," Discussion Papers 2012/12, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
    18. Beznoska, Martin & Steiner, Viktor, 2012. "Does consumption decline at retirement? Evidence from repeated cross-section data for Germany," Discussion Papers 2012/14, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
    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. Taylor, Alan M., 2012. "External Imbalances and Financial Crises," CEPR Discussion Papers 9255, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Hattendorff, Christian, 2012. "Do natural resource sectors rely less on external finance than manufacturing sectors?," Discussion Papers 2012/17, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
    3. Ashley M Votruba & Virginia S Y Kwan, 2015. "Disagreeing on Whether Agreement Is Persuasive: Perceptions of Expert Group Decisions," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(3), pages 1-9, March.

    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. Ebner, André, 2013. "A micro view on home equity withdrawal and its determinants: Evidence from Dutch households," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 321-337.
    2. Duca, John V. & Muellbauer, John & Murphy, Anthony, 2010. "Housing markets and the financial crisis of 2007-2009: Lessons for the future," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 203-217, December.
    3. Gozgor, Giray, 2014. "Determinants of domestic credit levels in emerging markets: The role of external factors," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 18(C), pages 1-18.
    4. Avdjiev, Stefan & Binder, Stephan & Sousa, Ricardo, 2021. "External debt composition and domestic credit cycles," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    5. Marianne Bertrand & Adair Morse, 2016. "Trickle-Down Consumption," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(5), pages 863-879, December.
    6. Philip Lane, 2013. "Financial Globalisation and the Crisis," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 555-580, July.
    7. Faria, João Ricardo & Wang, Le & Wu, Zhongmin, 2012. "Debts on debts," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 203-219.
    8. Mairead Roiste & Apostolos Fasianos & Robert Kirkby & Fang Yao, 2021. "Are Housing Wealth Effects Asymmetric in Booms and Busts?," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 62(4), pages 578-628, May.
    9. Davis, J. Scott & Mack, Adrienne & Phoa, Wesley & Vandenabeele, Anne, 2016. "Credit booms, banking crises, and the current account," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 360-377.
    10. Sun, Yunpeng & Gozgor, Giray & Lau, Chi Keung Marco & Soliman, Alaa M., 2025. "Inclusive finance and sustainability: The dynamic spillover effects of uncertainties on access to credit," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 73(PA).
    11. Suari-Andreu, Eduard, 2021. "Housing and household consumption: An investigation of the wealth and collateral effects," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    12. Jörg Bibow, 2010. "Alternative Strategien der Budgetkonsolidierung in Österreich nach der Rezession," IMK Studies 03-2010, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.
    13. Pan, Xuefeng & Wu, Weixing, 2021. "Housing returns, precautionary savings and consumption: Micro evidence from China," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 39-55.
    14. Marco Angrisani & Michael D. Hurd & Susann Rohwedder, 2015. "The Effect of Housing and Stock Wealth Losses on Spending in the Great Recession," Working Papers WR-1101, RAND Corporation.
    15. Aikman, David & Kiley, Michael & Lee, Seung Jung & Palumbo, Michael G. & Warusawitharana, Missaka, 2017. "Mapping heat in the U.S. financial system," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 36-64.
    16. Kajuth, Florian, 2010. "The role of liquidity constraints in the response of monetary policy to house prices," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 230-242, December.
    17. Gozgor, Giray, 2018. "Determinants of the domestic credits in developing economies: The role of political risks," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 430-443.
    18. Nyakabawo, Wendy & Miller, Stephen M. & Balcilar, Mehmet & Das, Sonali & Gupta, Rangan, 2015. "Temporal causality between house prices and output in the US: A bootstrap rolling-window approach," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 55-73.
    19. Ciarlone, Alessio, 2011. "Housing wealth effect in emerging economies," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 399-417.
    20. Christopher D. Carroll & Misuzu Otsuka & Jirka Slacalek, 2006. "How Large Is the Housing Wealth Effect? A New Approach," NBER Working Papers 12746, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    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:ste:nystbu:12-09. 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: Amanda Murphy The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Amanda Murphy to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ednyuus.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.