IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v115y2025i1p220-62.html

The Global Financial Resource Curse

Author

Listed:
  • Gianluca Benigno
  • Luca Fornaro
  • Martin Wolf

Abstract

We provide a model connecting the global saving glut to productivity growth. The key feature is that the tradable sector is the engine of growth of the economy. Capital flows from developing countries to the United States boost demand for US nontradable goods, inducing a reallocation of US economic activity from the tradable sector to the nontradable one. In turn, lower profits in the tradable sector lead firms to cut back investment in innovation. Since innovation in the United States determines the evolution of the world technological frontier, the result is a drop in global productivity growth.

Suggested Citation

  • Gianluca Benigno & Luca Fornaro & Martin Wolf, 2025. "The Global Financial Resource Curse," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 115(1), pages 220-262, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:115:y:2025:i:1:p:220-62
    DOI: 10.1257/aer.20211792
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20211792
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3886/E208605V1
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20211792.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20211792.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/aer.20211792?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas & Olivier Jeanne, 2013. "Capital Flows to Developing Countries: The Allocation Puzzle," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 80(4), pages 1484-1515.
    2. Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas & Olivier Jeanne, 2013. "Capital Flows to Developing Countries: The Allocation Puzzle," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 80(4), pages 1484-1515.
    3. Philip R. Lane & Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti, 2018. "The External Wealth of Nations Revisited: International Financial Integration in the Aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 66(1), pages 189-222, March.
    4. Benigno, Gianluca & Converse, Nathan & Fornaro, Luca, 2015. "Large capital inflows, sectoral allocation, and economic performance," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 60-87.
    5. John C. Driscoll & Aart C. Kraay, 1998. "Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimation With Spatially Dependent Panel Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(4), pages 549-560, November.
    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. Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Maurice Obstfeld, 2026. "You only live twice: Financial inflows and growth in a westward-facing Ukraine," Working Paper Series WP26-1, Peterson Institute for International Economics.
    2. Yadav, Ashutosh & Gyamfi, Bright Akwasi & Agozie, Divine Q. & Asongu, Simplice A., 2026. "From resource curse to financial opportunity: A quantile-based frontier analysis of resources conversion efficiency in Southeast Asia," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 228(C).

    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. Mavrogiannis, Christos & Tagkalakis, Athanasios, 2025. "The effects of structural reforms on gross capital inflows in OECD countries," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    2. Katja Mann, 2021. "Does foreign capital go where the returns are? Financial integration and capital allocation efficiency1," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(3), pages 3945-3971, July.
    3. Mark Aguiar, 2025. "The Costs and Consequences of Sovereign Borrowing," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 73(1), pages 1-19, March.
    4. Leonor Coutinho & Alessandro Turrini & Stefan Zeugner, 2018. "Methodologies for the Assessment of Current Account Benchmarks," European Economy - Discussion Papers 086, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    5. Dur, Ayşe & Glover, Andrew & Rothert, Jacek, 2025. "Uninsurable income risk and the welfare effects of reducing global imbalances," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    6. Stijn Claessens, 2017. "Global Banking: Recent Developments and Insights from Research," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 21(4), pages 1513-1555.
    7. Soyoung Kim & Kyunghee Min, 2023. "Long‐term determinants of valuation effects," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(3), pages 985-1031, August.
    8. Gianluca Benigno & Luca Fornaro & Martin Wolf, 2019. "The global financial resource curse," Economics Working Papers 1803, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Aug 2024.
    9. Jacek Rothert & Andy Glover & Ayse Kabukcuoglu Dur, 2023. "Winners and losers from reducing global imbalances," GRAPE Working Papers 80, GRAPE Group for Research in Applied Economics.
    10. Andrea Papetti, 2021. "Population aging, relative prices and capital flows across the globe," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 1333, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    11. Araujo, Juliana D. & David, Antonio C. & van Hombeeck, Carlos & Papageorgiou, Chris, 2017. "Joining the club? Procyclicality of private capital inflows in lower income developing economies," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 157-182.
    12. Tomoo Kikuchi & Satoshi Tobe, 2021. "Does Foreign Debt Contribute to Economic Growth?," Papers 2109.10517, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2022.
    13. Coutinho, Leonor & Turrini, Alessandro & Zeugner, Stefan, 2022. "Assessing the euro area current account," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    14. Choi, Woo Jin & Taylor, Alan M., 2022. "Precaution versus mercantilism: Reserve accumulation, capital controls, and the real exchange rate," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    15. Zsofia Barany & Nicolas Coeurdacier & Stéphane Guibaud, 2018. "Capital Flows in an Aging World," SciencePo Working papers hal-03393116, HAL.
    16. Maik Heinemann & Alexander Wulff, 2015. "Idiosyncratic Risk, Borrowing Constraints and Financial Integration - A Discussion of Ambiguous Results," Working Papers 2015019, Berlin Doctoral Program in Economics and Management Science (BDPEMS).
    17. Mika Nieminen, 2017. "Patterns of international capital flows and their implications for developing countries," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2017-171, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    18. Sposi, Michael, 2022. "Demographics and the evolution of global imbalances," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 1-14.
    19. Jürgen von Hagen & Haiping Zhang, 2014. "International Capital Flows in the Model with Limited Commitment and Incomplete Markets," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 195-224, February.
    20. Ricardo Reyes-Heroles, 2017. "The Role of Trade Costs in the Surge of Trade Imbalances," 2017 Meeting Papers 212, Society for Economic Dynamics.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity
    • E23 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Production
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • F32 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Current Account Adjustment; Short-term Capital Movements
    • F43 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Economic Growth of Open Economies
    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives

    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:aea:aecrev:v:115:y:2025:i:1:p:220-62. 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: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.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.