[Corrections made 11am Pacific]

“Getting the Balance Right: Transitioning Out of Sustained Current Account Surpluses” by Abdul Abiad, Daniel Leigh and Marco Terrones:

This chapter examines the experiences of economies
that ended large, sustained current account surpluses
through policy actions such as exchange rate appreciation
or macroeconomic stimulus. It subjects these
historical episodes to statistical analysis and provides a
narrative account of five specific transitions, examining
economic performance and identifying key factors that
explain various growth outcomes.

Continue reading →

From “The Global Financial Crisis: Explaining Cross-Country Differences in the Output Impact,” IMF WP 09/280, by Pelin Berkmen, Gaston Gelos, Robert Rennhack, and James P. Walsh:

We provide one of the first attempts at explaining the differences in the crisis impact across
developing countries and emerging markets. Using cross-country regressions to explain the
factors driving growth forecast revisions after the eruption of the global crisis, we find that a
small set of variables explain a large share of the variation in growth revisions. …

Continue reading →

The 2010 ERP was released today. The entire document is here. CEA Chair’s discussion is here.

Torsten Slok has a whole set of interesting pictures, two of which are particularly relevant in thinking about the US fiscal situation as compared to other advanced countries.

Continue reading →

In several previous posts, I’ve emphasized the importance of future US consumption behavior in determining whether the global imbalances shrink, or revert to their pre-crisis configuration. [0] [1] [2] An IMF SPN by Jaewoo Lee, Pau Rabanal, and Damiano Sandri weighs in on the question of consumption. From the executive summary:

Continue reading →

Policy Responses to the Great Recession. Links here.

Jeffry Frieden, Professor of Government at Harvard, has a new Council of Foreign Relations working paper “Global Imbalances, National Rebalancing, and the Political Economy of Recovery” :

Global macroeconomic imbalances — massive borrowing by some countries and massive lending by others — drove the financial boom and bubble that eventually burst into the current crisis. There is now nearly universal agreement that such imbalances cannot be sustained, and that the former deficit and surplus nations need to move toward macroeconomic balance.

Continue reading →

Chapters 2 and 3 of the IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report are out.

Continue reading →

I discussed current economic conditions and the prospects for the Obama stimulus plan on Kerri Miller’s “Midmorning” show on Minnesota Public Radio today. Capital Gains and Games‘ Stan Collender was also speaking. Here’s a link to the audio.

Continue reading →

From the Peterson Institute comes the “Real Time Economics Watch”. The latest posts are on how each crisis is different and yet the same [0], by Ted Truman, and the US/Japan parallels (or lack thereof) [1], authored by Adam Posen.

(The Peterson Institute doesn’t call it a weblog, but it seems like one…)