Last week I had the opportunity to attend an IMF conference (organized by Olivier Blanchard, Krishna Srinivasan, and Hamid Faruqee) focusing on the critical issue of assessing the sources of the pre-crisis imbalances in systemically key countries. The proceedings also had a forward looking component, highlighting the difficulties of determining when external imbalances are problematic. The conference proceedings are here.
Category Archives: international
Net Exports, Exports, Real Exchange Rates and Manufacturing
Several observers have noted that exports have increased substantially since the President made his commitment to doubling exports. [1] The most recent GDP release confirms improvement in the net exports to GDP ratio (ex. oil imports) and real exports, and a BEA release from a month and a half ago confirms a rebound in manufacturing value added.
“Financial Integration and Global Rebalancing”
I organized the International Economics and Finance Society panel on “Financial Integration and Global Rebalancing” at the
Allied Social Sciences Association meetings in Chicago. In the end, the papers fit together much better than I had anticipated; they all dealt with with the factors driving the puzzling pattern of current account balances — and how policy can possibly influence those patterns.
Thoughts on Europe, November 2010 and December 2011
Back in November of last year, when Jeff Frieden and I were putting the finishing touches on Lost Decades, we wrote:
Many countries with foreign debts in their own currency reduce their real debt burden by allowing their currency to drop in value, so that foreigners get repaid in less-valuable currency. But Greece and the other PIIGS cannot pursue this option on their own, for they share the euro with other countries, including some of the countries to which they owe money. Given this dynamic, investors and others worried that the European Central Bank would be forced to allow euro-zone inflation to rise — and perhaps even to allow the euro to depreciate — in order to alleviate some of the pain and suffering caused by its members’ debts.
Exports in the Recovery (II)
Following up on my previous post on the export contribution in the recovery (averaging 2.6 ppts since the trough), here are some additional observations. First, export growth in the current recovery has been substantially greater from the trough than in the last three recoveries.
Guest Contribution: “What can exports tell us about the economy?”
Today, we are fortunate to have Jay C. Shambaugh of the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University as a guest contributor.
There has been considerable debate lately about why the U.S. economy continues to struggle. Some — notably economists on the right and some Federal Reserve Bank Presidents — have argued that concerns about future taxes and regulation are preventing American businesses from investing and hiring. Other economists have argued that we have inadequate aggregate demand in the economy and that explains slow GDP and employment growth — not fear of future government policy.
Exports in the Recovery
Just a quick observation today, elicited by a question: what has been a consistent source of growth since the recovery began?
The Dollar and the Renminbi as International Currencies
There’s been a lot of discussion of the potential rise of the Renminbi as an international currency. In particular, Jeffrey Frankel has recently written a paper on the subject (blogpost), backed in part on research we did in our papers [1] [2] on the dollar. Now, the New York Fed’s Linda Goldberg, Mark Choi and Hunter Clark have re-examined some of benefits of being an international currency in a post entitled What If the U.S. Dollar’s Global Role Changed?.
“Financial Stability in Emerging Markets: Dealing with Global Liquidity”
That was the title of a conference in Beijing (October 21st), organized by the Central University of Finance and Economics (CUFE), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), and the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) . I had the privileged of delivering a keynote speech. The conference agenda is here, and encompassed three sessions: Global Liquidity — Consequences and Policy Options; Dealing with International Capital Flows; and a panel forum on International Capital Flows and the International Monetary System.
“International Policy Implications and Lessons From the Global Financial Crisis”
Last Friday and Saturday, the JIMF 4th Annual Conference at UC Santa Cruz took place, organized by Joshua Aizenman (UCSC & NBER), Robert Dekle (USC) & James Lothian (Fordham University & JIMF) and sponsored by JIMF, SCCIE-UCSC, and the FRBs of Atlanta and San Francisco. I didn’t get a chance to go, which was unfortunate as the papers were relevant to thinking about how the international financial system is linked to the events of 2008.