人口结构变迁与经常账目失衡

世界范围内持续多年的经常账目失衡并不鲜见,以往研究多关注汇率和净出口的关系,而忽视了经常账目余额的另外一种属性——本国在外国的储蓄。本文尝试从人口结构变迁的角度对这一问题给出新的解释。本文通过构建包括幼年抚养比和老年抚养比的世代交替模型,理论分析和预测了：幼年抚养比上升会降低储蓄率、增加投资率,从而减少经常账目余额;而老年抚养比下降会提高储蓄率,增加经常账目余额;试图填补人口结构对经常账目影响的理论空白。接下来,本文利用1990年至2011年全球110个国家的强平衡面板数据进行实证分析,在静态和动态模型下均得到了与理论预测相一致的稳健结果。根据实证结果进行定量分析,本文发现中国抚养比的变化可以解释1990年至2007年间经常账目余额占GDP比重16.6%的变动。     

An evaluation of the saving,investment, and current account balances of five ASEAN economies

This paper evaluates the saving, investment and current account balances (CABs) of five ASEAN economies: Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines over the period 1976 to 1997. The method is to apply a calibrated representative agent model of optimal saving and investment to each of these economies. The model generates optimal saving, investment and CABs for each year from 1976 to 1997 and these are compared with the actual balances. The results suggest that three of the ASEAN countries—Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand—had below-optimal current account ratios (to GDP) on average over the period 1976 to 1997, for most reasonable values of parameters. This was the result of over-investment for Malaysia and Thailand and under-saving by the Philippines. For Singapore and, to a lesser extent Indonesia, the reverse applies—their current account ratios were above-optimal on average due to over-saving.     

Demographic Change,International Trade and Capital Flows

Trade in goods that are not perfect substitutes can considerably change the predictions of standard neoclassical models about the effects of demographic developments. This paper considers a relative decrease in the population size of one country, when countries specialize in the production of different intermediate goods. The degree of substitutability is crucial for the direction of capital flows between the countries and for the development of wages. The less those goods are substitutes, the stronger the long-run international spillover effects of a demographic shock will be. For the interest rate effects, also international differences in saving rates due to e.g., different pension schemes have to be taken into account.     

Devaluation, Capital Formation, and the Current Account

This paper re-examines the effects of devaluation and a rise in the rate of devaluation on capital formation and the current account in an optimizing monetary model of a small open economy with endogenous labor, investment with adjustment costs, and perfect capital mobility. It is shown that devaluation leads to capital accumulation and a current-account deficit in the long run and during the adjustment process, whereas a rise in the rate of devaluation has an ambiguous impact on capital formation and the current account depending on the relationship between consumption and real balances in the utility function. If consumption and real balances are separable or complements, then a rise in the rate of devaluation produces capital decumulation and a current-account surplus in the long run as well as on the transition path. These results stand in sharp contrast with Calvo (1981). JEL Classification Numbers: F41     

How Much Will China Save? Projecting China's National Savings Through 2040*

This paper projects China's national savings through 2040 based on China's national account data, demographic data, and data on rural and urban life‐cycle income and consumption. Our baseline projections show that China's national saving in 2040 will be 16 times the current national saving. The annual growth rate of wealth will decline from 16.3 percent in 2012 to 9.5 percent in 2040. Lowering the growth rate of wealth accumulation to the current rate of return to wealth increases consumption through 2040; lowering the growth rate of wealth further may increase consumption more in the short run, but less in the long run.     

Why Nations Become Wealthy: The Effects of Adult Longevity on Saving

We analyze steady state and out-of-steady-state effects of the transition in adult longevity on the national saving rate using historical data and international panel data. The rise in adult life expectancy has a large and statistically significant effect on aggregate saving. The effects have been especially pronounced in East Asia because its mortality transition was very rapid. Gains in life expectancy are much more important than declines in child dependency. Population aging may not lead to lower saving rates in the future if life expectancy and the duration of retirement continue to increase.     

Financial crises,Asian stock indices,and current accounts: An Asian-U.S. comparative study

This paper investigates the effects of financial crises-based exchange rate, real interest rate, and personal consumption expenditure on stock market indices and balances of current account in four Asian countries/areas, and the U.S. from 1997 to 2010. Results obtained from Sims's first-order DSGE representation suggest that two policy variables – changes in the exchange rate and changes in the real interest rate lagged by one quarter – act as stabilizers for contemporaneous changes in stock indices for Thailand, Malaysia, and the U.S., but as destabilizers for Taiwan and Hong Kong. However, changes in personal consumption expenditure lagged by one quarter only play a destabilizing role in Hong Kong. For contemporaneous changes in the current account balance, all three policy variables become destabilizers for all five countries except the one-quarter lagged change in real interest rate, which acts as a stabilizer in Malaysia.     

Why Has China's Current Account Balance Converged after the Global Financial Crisis?

China's current account surplus declined significantly from its peak of nearly 10 percent of GDP in 2007 to less than 1 percent in 2018. The new pattern offered fresh evidence for our understanding of China's current account dynamics. In this paper, we used flow of funds data to gauge its underlying driving forces. Specifically, by employing index decomposition analysis, we decomposed the current account from the perspective of savings and investment into three sectors: the household, corporate, and government sectors. We found that the decline in China's current account ratio was first driven by cyclical factors, i.e. weak corporate saving growth induced by the economic slump in 2009 as well as the following massive corporate investment bolstered by the government stimulus plan. However, such cyclical factors quickly subsided, and the subsequent current account balance reduction was later supported by structural factors, i.e. household savings declined enduringly and the Chinese government switched to a more expansionary fiscal policy. There are three possible explanations for the structural movement: reduced precautionary saving due to higher social security coverage ratio, lower corporate profits as a result of economic slowdown, and a twin deficit due to the government's more relaxed fiscal stance. The new facts, however, were not consistent with other current account theories focusing on long‐term aspects of the saving–investment account puzzle, especially those relating to China's special demographic characteristics.     

人口年龄结构转变对经常项目差额的影响机制与实证分析

本文对人口年龄结构转变作用于经常项目差额的影响机制进行了分析,在此基础上运用协整、基于VECM的Granger因果检验、脉冲响应函数分析了劳动力抚养负担、经济增长和经常项目差额之间的动态关系。研究发现,应从长期性结构视角认识劳动力抚养负担对经常项目差额的反向作用;短期来看,二者之间不存在显著关系。与此不同,经济增长对经常项目的影响无论是长期还是短期都非常显著。快速减轻的劳动力抚养负担通过储蓄、消费、投资、出口以及政府财政收支等传导变量促使经常项目差额增加,这是人口年龄结构、经济增长以及经常项目差额之间动态关系产生的内在逻辑。     

The Macroeconomic Effects of Large Exchange Rate Appreciations

Although currency adjustment is often proposed as a policy tool to reduce current account imbalances, there is no consensus regarding the macroeconomic effects. In this paper we study the macroeconomic aftermath of large exchange rate appreciations. Using a sample of 128 countries over the period 1960–2008, we identify 25 episodes of large nominal and real appreciations shocks. We use narrative identification of exogenous appreciation episodes and study the macroeconomic effects in a dummy-augmented panel autoregressive model. Our results indicate that exchange rate appreciations tend to have strong effects on current account balances. Within 3 years after the appreciation event, the current account balance on average deteriorates by three percentage points of GDP. This effect occurs through a reduction of savings without a meaningful reduction in investment. Real export growth slows down substantially, but the output costs are small and not statistically significant. All these effects appear somewhat more pronounced in developing countries.     

Housing prices and the high Chinese saving rate puzzle

China's over 25% aggregate household saving rate is one of the highest in the world. One popular view attributes the high saving rate to fast-rising housing prices in China. However, cross-sectional data do not show a significant relationship between housing prices and household saving rates. This article uses a simple consumption-saving model to explain why rising housing prices per se cannot explain China's high household saving rate. Although borrowing constraints and demographic changes can translate housing prices to the aggregate saving rate, quantitative simulations of our model using Chinese time-series data on household income, housing prices, and demographics indicate that rising mortgage costs can increase the aggregate saving rate by at most 2 to 4 percentage points in the best down-payment structure.     

Demographic destiny, per-capita consumption and the Japanese saving-investment balance

In this paper, we revisit the issue of the impact of demographicchange on the Japanese saving investment balance. Using updatedgovernment projections, we show that the ageing of the populationunder way will steadily lower Japan's saving rate from 31 percent of GDP today to 20 per cent of GDP in 2040. Japan's investmentrate will remain close to its current level of 29 per cent.Thus, Japan's saving investment balance, or current account,will steadily decrease from its current level and will turnnegative in 2025. In addition, we project the impact of demographicchange on the evolution of Japanese consumption per capita,or 'living standards'. Despite the population ageing, we projectthat per-capita consumption will grow until 2010. However, undercertain scenarios, consumption per capita falls in most yearsafter 2010.     

服务贸易、非对称开放与全球失衡:一项跨国的经验研究

文章从贸易内部结构出发，分析非对称开放条件下，服务贸易兴起与全球失衡之间的关系。并利用全球59个主要贸易国家2000-2014年双边贸易数据对两者之间的关系进行计量分析，实证结果显示：第一，服务贸易净值与经常账户余额之间存在显著的负向关系，服务贸易净值提高100万美元，经常账户余额减少98.7万美元。在引入交互项之后这种关系依然显著成立。因此，服务贸易的非对称开放是造成全球失衡的重要原因。第二，技术进步和利率上调可以扭转服务贸易对经常账户的抑制作用。第三，金融危机之后，服务贸易和经常账户的负向关系进一步强化。后危机时代，全球失衡现象有可能继续恶化。第四，分位数回归发现，在低点位处服务贸易净值对经常账户的影响更为强烈。文章的研究为理解中国的服务贸易逆差提供了新的视角，并为扭转服务贸易逆差奠定了理论基础。     

Macroeconomic implications of population aging: Evidence from Japan

Population aging is an important feature of Japan’s economy, which since 2006 has become a super-aged society. Changes in the age distribution of the population have important macroeconomic implications. Using annual data for 1960–2015, this study tests whether population age shares have long run influences on domestic saving, domestic investment, real GDP, inflation, the fiscal balance, and the current account balance. Cointegration is found between each macroeconomic variable and the demographic variables, which is a key finding of the analysis. The main empirical findings from the long-run cointegrating equations are that the effects of demographic change on the macroeconomic variables are statistically significant and quite strong. Alternative variants of the United Nation’s population projections provide further evidence of the importance of the demographic changes for Japan’s macroeconomic future. This study finds that future trends of key macroeconomic variables are not monotonic, but rather that long swings in the demographic factors produce a mixture of moderate growth periods and episodes of GDP stagnation.     

Demographic Effects on Personal Saving in the Future

After briefly examining the various proposed causes for the decline in the U.S. personal saving rate in the past decade, this essay then argues that a shift in the demographic composition of the population will be a much more important cause for a decline in personal saving in the future. A change in the balance between those in the labor force who are saving and retirees who are dissaving will result in a considerable fall in the aggregate saving rate under most assumptions. The simulation model used to examine this phenomenon takes into account the interest rate, the growth rate of the economy, the retirement age. the growth of population, and the life expectancy. Attention is also given to certain consequences of the fall in the saving rate, such as changes in the interest rate, changes in asset prices, and a decline in the GDP growth rate.     

The determinants and long-term projections of saving rates in Developing Asia

In this paper, we present data on trends over time in domestic saving rates in twelve economies in Developing Asia during the 1966–2007 period and analyze the determinants of these trends. We find that domestic saving rates in Developing Asia have, in general, been high and rising but that there have been substantial differences from economy to economy, that the main determinants of these trends appear to have been the age structure of the population (especially the aged dependency ratio), income levels, and the level of financial sector development, and that the impacts of income levels and the level of financial sector development have been nonlinear (convex and concave, respectively). We then project future trends in domestic saving rates in Developing Asia for the 2011–2030 period based on our estimation results and find that the domestic saving rate in Developing Asia as a whole will remain roughly constant during the next two decades despite rapid population aging in some economies in Developing Asia because population aging will occur much later in other economies and because the negative impact of population aging on the domestic saving rate will be largely offset by the positive impact of higher income levels.     

Terms of Trade Shocks and the Current Account: Evidence from Five Industrial Countries

What is the effect of shocks to the terms of trade on a country's current account position? The Harberger-Laursen-Metzler effect predicts that an adverse shock to the terms of trade will worsen the current account balance; in contrast, the prediction of intertemporal models of the current account is dependent on the duration of the shock. This paper examines several features of the terms of trade series of five OECD countries, and the relationship between terms of trade shocks and the current account balance. Median shocks to the terms of trade are found to be highly persistent, yet with a large transitory component, and to account for only a small share of the variability of current account balances in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In contrast, terms of trade shocks are found to account for a relatively large proportion of the variability of current account balances in Australia and New Zealand.

     

U.S. current account debate with Japan then,with China now

This paper examines two U.S. current account deficit episodes, one in the 1980s and the other in the current 2000s, in which Japan and China, respectively, are the current account surplus countries that are criticized for contributing to the deficits. In both periods, U.S. policy makers pointed out the underdeveloped and closed financial markets of the current account surplus countries and advocated for these countries to fix the deficiencies, a position akin to the current “saving glut” argument. In both episodes, the current account surplus countries have criticized the United States for its low saving, especially public saving (the “Twin Deficit” argument). This paper presents empirical findings that are consistent with the Twin Deficit hypothesis; A one percentage point increase in the budget balance raises the current account balance by 0.10–0.49 percentage point for industrialized countries. The saving glut argument seems to be applicable only for countries with highly developed legal systems and open financial markets. While the United States has been experiencing a savings drought in both episodes, the Japanese current account surplus was driven by underinvestment in the 1980s and by over-saving during the 2000s. Furthermore, although the current Chinese current account surplus is driven by its over-saving, there is no evidence of excess domestic saving in the Asian emerging market countries; rather, they seem to have suffered from depressed investment in the wake of the 1997 financial crises.     

The Savings Rate Debate: Does the Dependency Hypothesis Hold for Australia and Canada?

Australia and Canada have both experienced a long-run increase in aggregate savings rates over the past century from below 10 per cent to rates exceeding 20 per cent. Two recent studies have concluded that demographic change played the predominant role in driving this long-run trend for both nations, one of which implies that a declining child dependency burden caused savings rates to increase over time. New results obtained by using a cointegration approach show that savings rates were driven by increases in real income in the long run. In the short run, increases in the working-age population in Canada increased the savings rate. In Australia, baby booms and busts occurred simultaneously with savings booms and busts. Contrary to recent work, there is no significant evidence to support a child dependency burden on savings for Australia or Canada over the last century.