IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iae/iaewps/wp2011n20.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Global Imbalances and the Paradox of Thrift

Author

Listed:
  • W. Max Corden

    (Department of Economics, The University of Melbourne)

Abstract

Global imbalances refer to current account surpluses and deficits. This is a form of international intertemporal trade, and the neoclassical approach suggests that there are gains from trade, and hence there may be no problem created by global imbalances. This paper presents qualifications to this argument. A crucial concept is the "return journey", namely the need for borrowers to pay interest (or dividends) and eventually to be able to repay. Thus savings must lead to investment, which provides the future resources to enable the return journey. If borrowing is used to finance current consumption, wars, or unwise ("unfruitful") investment, such as excessive housing construction, the result will be a crisis. In this way the high net savings of some countries actually led to the recent crisis. This is a new version of Keynes’ “paradox of thrift” The central issue on which this paper focuses is the failure of high net savings by the “savings glut” countries to lead to fruitful investment in other countries, both in the United States and in developing countries. Hence a crisis was caused by the lack of provision for the return journey.

Suggested Citation

  • W. Max Corden, 2011. "Global Imbalances and the Paradox of Thrift," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2011n20, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    • Handle: RePEc:iae:iaewps:wp2011n20
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/downloads/working_paper_series/wp2011n20.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Maurice Obstfeld & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 1996. "Foundations of International Macroeconomics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262150476, December.
    2. Martin Wolf, 2008. "Comments On ‘The Global Imbalances: What Is The Problem?’, The 2007 Wincott Lecture, Given By Max Corden," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(2), pages 59-62, June.
    3. Raghuram G. Rajan, 2005. "Has financial development made the world riskier?," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, issue Aug, pages 313-369.
    4. Raghuram G. Rajan, 2010. "Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9111.
    5. Corden, W. Max., 1997. "Trade Policy and Economic Welfare," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 2, number 9780198775348, Decembrie.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mario Amendola & Jean-Luc Gaffard & Francesco Saraceno, 2012. "Production Process Heterogeneity, Time to Build, and Macroeconomic Performance," Revue de l'OFCE, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 0(5), pages 263-294.
    2. Andrew Hughes Hallett & Juan Carlos Martinez Oliva, 2012. "Global Imbalances in a World of Inflexible Real Exchange Rates and Capital Controls," Global Economic Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(4), pages 319-340, December.
    3. Körner, Finn Marten, 2011. "An equilibrium model of 'global imbalances' revisited," Violette Reihe: Schriftenreihe des Promotionsschwerpunkts "Globalisierung und Beschäftigung" 33/2011, University of Hohenheim, Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, Evangelisches Studienwerk.
    4. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/53r60a8s3kup1vc9l564n09r8 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Mario Amendola & Jean-Luc Gaffard & Francesco Saraceno, 2012. "Production process heterogeneity, time to build, and macroeconomic performance," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-01053563, HAL.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Roy, Saktinil & Kemme, David M., 2012. "Causes of banking crises: Deregulation, credit booms and asset bubbles, then and now," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 270-294.
    2. Till Treeck, 2014. "Did Inequality Cause The U.S. Financial Crisis?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(3), pages 421-448, July.
    3. Philip R. Lane, 2011. "External Imbalances and Macroeconomic Policy in New Zealand," The Institute for International Integration Studies Discussion Paper Series iiisdp376, IIIS.
    4. Harold M. Hastings & Tai Young-Taft & Chih-Jui Tsen, 2020. "Ecology, Economics, and Network Dynamics," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_971, Levy Economics Institute.
    5. Landier, Augustin & Plantin, Guillaume, 2011. "Inequality, tax avoidance and financial instability," TSE Working Papers 11-282, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    6. Zhang, Jiarui & Xu, Xiaonian, 2020. "The effects of the monetary policy on the U.S. housing boom from 2001 to 2006," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(4), pages 301-322.
    7. Altavilla, Carlo & Laeven, Luc & Peydró, José-Luis, 2020. "Monetary and Macroprudential Policy Complementarities: evidence from European credit registers," CEPR Discussion Papers 15539, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Gourinchas, Pierre-Olivier & Rey, Hélène, 2014. "External Adjustment, Global Imbalances, Valuation Effects," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 585-645, Elsevier.
    9. Verdier, Thierry & Tressel, Thierry, 2014. "Optimal Prudential Regulation of Banks and the Political Economy of Supervision," CEPR Discussion Papers 9871, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Gomis, Roger. & Khatiwada, Sameer., 2016. "Debt and productivity evidence from firm-level data," ILO Working Papers 994909333402676, International Labour Organization.
    11. Jean Arcand & Enrico Berkes & Ugo Panizza, 2015. "Too much finance?," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 20(2), pages 105-148, June.
    12. W. Max Corden, 2007. "Those Current Account Imbalances: A Sceptical View1," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(3), pages 363-382, March.
    13. W. Max Corden, 2006. "Those Current Account Imbalances: A Sceptical View," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2006n13, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    14. Wörgötter, Andreas & Coricelli, Fabrizio & Ravasan, Farshad R, 2013. "The origins of the German current account surplus: Unbalanced productivity growth and structural change," CEPR Discussion Papers 9527, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Issing, Otmar, 2018. "Stabiles Geld - eine Illusion? Alternative Währungssysteme - Hayeks Fundamentalkritik - Unabhängigkeit der Notenbanken," SAFE White Paper Series 52, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    16. Marco Pagano, 2014. "Dealing with Financial Crises: How Much Help from Research?," CSEF Working Papers 361, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    17. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2018. "Frontiers of macrofinancial linkages," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 95.
    18. Yasemin Barlas, 2012. ""Fault Lines" by Raghuram G. Rajan," Central Bank Review, Research and Monetary Policy Department, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, vol. 12(2), pages 37-44.
    19. William R. White, 2012. "Credit Crises and the Shortcomings of Traditional Policy Responses," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 971, OECD Publishing.
    20. Elias Papaioannou & Richard Portes, 2008. "The international role of the euro: a status report," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 317, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Global imbalances; paradox of thrift; financial crisis; instability of capital flows; world savings glut; quantitative easing;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F32 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Current Account Adjustment; Short-term Capital Movements
    • F34 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Lending and Debt Problems

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iae:iaewps:wp2011n20. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sheri Carnegie (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mimelau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.