Financial flows,financial crises,and global imbalances

In this lecture I document the proliferation of gross international asset and liability positions and discuss some consequences for individual countries’ external adjustment processes and for global financial stability. In light of the rapid growth of gross global financial flows and the serious risks associated with them, one might wonder about the continuing relevance of the net financial flow measured by the current account balance. I argue that global current account imbalances remain an essential target for policy scrutiny, for financial as well as macroeconomic reasons. Nonetheless, it is critically important for policymakers to monitor as well the rapidly evolving structure of global gross assets and liabilities.     

论全球国际收支失衡下的中国金融安全

全球国际收支失衡正在成为威胁金融安全的一个重要问题.中国作为全球经济增长最快的发展中国家,如何在全球国际收支失衡形势下维护自我金融安全,具有重要的现实意义.本文在总结评价国际金融学界观点的基础上重新定义了金融安全的概念.并根据全球国际收支失衡对中国金融安全的影响提出维护金融安全的对策和建议.     

Thousands of models,one story: Current account imbalances in the global economy

The global financial crisis has led to a revival of the empirical literature on current account imbalances. This paper contributes to that literature by investigating the importance of evaluating model and parameter uncertainty prior to reaching any firm conclusion. We explore three alternative econometric strategies: examining all models, selecting a few, and combining them all. Out of thousands (or indeed millions) of models a story emerges. The chance that current accounts were aligned with fundamentals prior to the financial crisis appears to be minimal.     

How the UK economy weathered the financial storm

Prior to the global financial crisis of 2008, the UK had the largest banking sector asset to GDP ratio among large countries, and had experienced rapid real property price increases as well as a persistent current account deficit in the preceding decade. These factors, together with its role as an international financial centre, made the UK economy particularly vulnerable to the onset of the global financial crisis. Although the initial drop in real GDP was steep, we provide evidence that the economy has weathered the financial storm better than many feared, and has fared no worse than its peer group of major economies. In this paper we assess the reasons underlying this outcome, including the possibility of exaggerated vulnerabilities, global economic recovery, the flexible supply side of the UK economy, as well as fiscal, financial and monetary policy interventions. Our analysis suggests that all of these factors played a role in cushioning the impact on the UK real economy, leading to a more benign outcome than most observers expected.     

The Great Recession: US dynamics and spillovers to the world economy

This paper provides an empirical investigation of both the within-US and international channels of transmission of macroeconomic and financial shocks by means of a 50-country macroeconometric model (estimated over the 1980-2009 period), including measures of excess liquidity and financial fragility, specifically designed in order to evaluate the relevance of the boom-bust credit cycle view put forward as an interpretation of the recent “Great Recession” episode. We find that such a view is consistent with the empirical evidence. Moreover, concerning the real effects of financial shocks within the US, we detect stronger evidence of an asset prices channel, rather than a liquidity channel. Concerning the spillovers to the world economy, we find that while financial disturbances are transmitted to foreign countries through US house and stock price dynamics, as well as excess liquidity creation, the trade channel is the key trasmission mechanism of real shocks.     

External Constraints on Monetary Policy and the Financial Accelerator

We develop a small open economy macroeconomic model where financial conditions influence aggregate behavior. Our goal is to explore the connection between the exchange rate regime and financial distress. We first show that a calibrated version of the model captures well the behavior of the Korean economy during its financial crisis period of 1997–98. In particular, the model accounts for the sharp increase in lending rates and the large drop in output, employment, investment, and measured productivity. The financial market frictions play an important role, further, explaining roughly half the decline in overall economic activity. We then perform some counterfactual exercises to illustrate how the fixed exchange rate regime likely exacerbated the crisis by tying the hands of monetary policy.     

全球金融危机成因的综合反思

2007年金融危机发生在金融、经济、制度高度发达的中心国家,是由世界经济体系的薄弱环节断裂导致的,是对制度模式、经济失衡和国际货币体系的一种调整.金融层面的原因在于次贷危机,金融创新过度,金融衍生产品泛滥,美国金融体系存在诸多不完善之处,金融监管不力、缺失.从经济层面分析,美国国内经济失衡是危机爆发的基础原因,全球经济失衡是2007年金融危机爆发的深层原因,金融危机是市场经济周期运行的必然结果.制度层面的原因主要包括过度干预经济,美国模式的技术缺陷和不合理的国际货币体系.     

Capital inflows,monetary policy,and financial imbalances

Ahead of the global financial crisis, financial imbalances built up across advanced economies as credit grew and was increasingly funded in wholesale financial markets. This paper investigates empirically three potential drivers of the build-up of these financial imbalances: rising global imbalances (capital flows); loose monetary policy; and inadequate supervision and regulation. We perform panel data regressions for OECD countries from 1999 to 2007 to explore the relative importance of these factors. We find that differences in the build-up of wholesale-funded credit were driven by the strength of capital inflows. Moreover, we document an interaction effect, whereby the effect of inflows on the build-up was amplified where the supervisory and regulatory environment was relatively weak. In contrast, differences in monetary policy did not significantly affect differences across countries in the build-up of these financial imbalances ahead of the crisis.     

Current account balance and dollar standard: Exploring the linkages

This paper examines whether the international role of the dollar as main global reserve currency has contributed to persistent current account imbalances. To this end, we analyse how central banks' accumulation of reserve assets affects the current account balance of both reserve-accumulating and reserve-providing countries.Based on a simple portfolio balance model we show theoretically that the global demand for reserve assets by central banks may lower the current account balance of the reserve-issuing country. Our panel data analysis over the period 1970–2009 confirms this hypothesis: Any dollar of provided reserve assets decreases the US current account by more than one dollar. On average, the demand for dollar reserves has lowered the US current account by 1–2 percentage points relative to GDP. The flip side of this effect is a higher current account balance in reserve-accumulating countries. These novel findings show that the worldwide demand for international reserves has contributed to the buildup of global imbalances.     

全球贸易失衡成因分析：基于中美贸易失衡视角下的实证分析

当前全球正经历着第三次贸易失衡,也是最为严重的一次贸易失衡.贸易失衡给世界经济、政治、文化等各个方面带来严重冲击,甚至引发全球性的危机.文章从国际贸易相关理论出发,认为各国间的单位劳动力成本、经济增长差异、对外贸易竞争力差异和储蓄率差异均是导致全球贸易失衡的主要影响因素.全球贸易失衡现有治理机制存在一定的缺陷,文章结合现有贸易失衡治理机制优缺点和全球贸易失衡主要成因,提出解决全球贸易失衡的对策建议.     

全球金融危机成因的综合反思

2007年金融危机起源于金融、经济、制度高度发达的中心国家，是由世界经济体系的薄弱环节断裂导致的，是对制度模式、经济失衡和国际货币体系的一种调整。金融层面的原因在于次贷危机．金融创新过度，金融衍生产品泛滥，美国金融体系存在诸多不完善之处．金融监管不力、缺失。从经济层面分析，美国国内经济失衡是危机爆发的基础原因．全球经济失衡是金融危机爆发的深层原因，金融危机是市场经济周期运行的必然结果。制度层面的原因主要包括过度干预经济，美国模式的技术缺陷和不合理的国际货币体系。     

国际货币发行权责与全球经济“双失衡”的历史与逻辑

当前的全球经济失衡起源于货币虚拟化而引起的国际货币与非国际货币的区分。这为国际货币发行国大行国际货币发行的权利、而很少承担其应有的责任提供了条件,是造成全球经济失衡的重要原因之一,其实质是虚拟经济与实体经济的失衡。长时间的失衡将加剧国际货币体系的动荡和全球金融市场的动荡,严重威胁着世界经济的稳定和发展。因此,必须从国际货币体系本身,以及虚拟经济与实体经济关系的角度加以纠正。     

政策性金融与地方金融的互动模式与运用探讨

政策性金融能否与商业金融有机统一，是地方经济发展的重要突破口。目前，商业银行是地方建设的主要资金来源，政策性金融因为投入不够，其应该发挥的社会效益并没有显现成效。本文以服务于区域经济为立足点，提出了加强二者关联的技巧和完善途径，从而改变现阶段地方金融失衡的状态。     

A Welfare-Based Analysis of International Monetary Policy Spillovers at the Zero Lower Bound

We study the welfare effects of international monetary policy spillovers at the zero lower bound, focusing on the effects of forward guidance in a large economy (“foreign”) on its smaller trading partner (“home”) in scenarios motivated by the global financial crisis. We find that foreign forward guidance has an overall prosper-thy-neighbor effect on the home economy as long as it increases foreign welfare. This finding holds under alternative assumptions about exchange rate pass-through or the degree of international financial integration. However, foreign forward guidance may worsen the trade-off between the stabilization objectives of home monetary policy.     

Endogenous tradability and some macroeconomic implications

While nontraded goods play an important role in many open economy macroeconomic models, these models have difficulty explaining the low volatility in the relative price of nontraded goods. In contrast to macroeconomic convention, this paper argues that the share of nontraded goods is endogenous, a time-varying product of macroeconomic shocks and trade costs that are heterogeneous across goods. A simple open economy model demonstrates that trade cost heterogeneity and a time-varying margin of tradedness dramatically reduces the volatility of nontraded prices. This also reduces the ability of real exchange rate adjustments to dampen current account imbalances.     

An open-economy macro-finance model of international interdependence: The OECD,US and the UK

This paper develops a multi-country macro-finance model to study international economic and financial linkages. This approach models the economy and financial markets jointly using both types of data to throw light on such issues. The world economy is modelled using data for the US and aggregate OECD economies as well as the US Treasury bond market using latent variables to represent a common inflation trend and a US real interest rate factor. We find strong evidence of global effects on both the US and UK, calling into question the standard closed economy macro-finance specification. These economic linkages also help to explain the co-movement of yields in the US and UK Treasury bond markets.     

International transmission of financial shocks in an estimated DSGE model

This paper investigates the transmission of financial shocks across large economies. To quantify these effects, we estimate a two-region open economy DSGE model that includes frictions in credit markets. The baseline model fails to replicate the high correlation between the U.S. and Euro Area macroeconomic variables. Allowing for an ad hoc, cross-regional correlation in financial shocks considerably improves the model's ability to match the data. We extend the baseline model by including global banks, and generate an endogenous cross-regional correlation of borrowing costs. Simulations demonstrate large spillover effects, and highlight the importance of including frictions in international financial contracts for more accurately capturing the high cross-regional correlation.     

External balance adjustment: An intra-national and international comparison

Large external imbalances have become a policy concern. This study investigates the determinants of external balances for regions within a single country—Canadian provinces—as well as for a sample of 18 OECD countries. External balance adjustment may differ for provinces since there are few intra-national barriers to the mobility of capital, goods and labour within Canada. Also, because Canada is a monetary union, there is no currency risk associated with lending and borrowing across provinces, and this may promote inter-provincial financial flows. The estimates show that the short run response of the external balance to disturbances, such as a deterioration in the terms of trade, is typically larger for Canadian provinces than for OECD countries. There is also a much greater speed of adjustment of the external balance in the Canadian provinces. This faster adjustment speed, combined with the larger response of the external balance, means that provinces may see a quicker resolution of external imbalances, but larger deficits or surpluses may emerge before adjustment occurs.     

Thresholds in the process of international financial integration

The financial crisis has re-ignited the fierce debate about the merits of financial globalization and its implications for growth, especially for developing countries. The empirical literature has not been able to conclusively establish the presumed growth benefits of financial integration. Indeed, a new literature proposes that the indirect benefits of financial integration may be more important than the traditional financing channel emphasized in previous analyses. A major complication, however, is that there seem to be certain “threshold” levels of financial and institutional development that an economy needs to attain before it can derive the indirect benefits and reduce the risks of financial openness. In this paper, we develop a unified empirical framework for characterizing such threshold conditions. We find that there are clearly identifiable thresholds in variables such as financial depth and institutional quality—the cost-benefit trade-off from financial openness improves significantly once these threshold conditions are satisfied. We also find that the thresholds are lower for foreign direct investment and portfolio equity liabilities compared to those for debt liabilities.