Understanding Global Imbalances

Abstract:

Two contemporary issues provide reason to focus on national saving and investment: the debate over public pensions, and pensions more generally, in all rich countries; and the large global current account imbalances, conceptually the difference between national savings and domestic investment. Are we all saving enough to provide adequate retirement income for rapidly ageing populations—especially Americans, whose household savings seems to have disappeared altogether in 2005? And are the countries with large external deficits—notably the United States—mortgaging the income of future generations inappropriately, not to mention courting financial calamity in the meantime?

This paper will not answer either question definitively, but I hope to shed some light on them, especially the second. The focus of attention will be the United States, but in an increasingly globalized economy it is increasingly anachronistic to focus on domestic factors alone, and it is simply inappropriate when the issue is the country's external deficit—equal attention must be devoted to the counterpart surpluses elsewhere in the world.

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Last updated on 03/21/2015