IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/econwp/qt7j3436bf.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

America’s Deficit, the World’s Problem

Author

Listed:
  • Obstfeld, Maurice

Abstract

The United States deficit on current account, now running at an annual rate of over $700 billion, has reached levels (as a percent of U.S. GDP) not seen since the first decades of the nineteenth century. The deficit is soaking up roughly three-quarters of the world's available external surpluses. Were the deficit to continue at this pace, the U.S. could ultimately converge to an external debt/GDP ratio around 1. Several analyses suggest that a rapid adjustment of the deficit toward balance would require a very sharp real depreciation of the U.S. dollar. This paper reviews the limitations of some optimistic arguments that predict instead a "soft landing" for the dollar. I focus in particular on the view that greater financial globalization allows the U.S. easily to run much bigger deficits for much longer periods. Some simple calculations based on real interest rate differentials suggest that markets could be underestimating the extent of necessary dollar depreciation.

Suggested Citation

  • Obstfeld, Maurice, 2005. "America’s Deficit, the World’s Problem," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt7j3436bf, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
  • Handle: RePEc:cdl:econwp:qt7j3436bf
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/7j3436bf.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul R. Krugman, 1985. "Is the strong dollar sustainable?," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, pages 103-155.
    2. Morris, Stephen & Shin, Hyun Song, 1998. "Unique Equilibrium in a Model of Self-Fulfilling Currency Attacks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(3), pages 587-597, June.
    3. repec:cto:journl:v:24:y:2004:i:1-2:p:1-11 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Obstfeld,Maurice & Taylor,Alan M., 2005. "Global Capital Markets," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521671798, October.
    5. Dooley, Michael P, 2000. "A Model of Crises in Emerging Markets," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(460), pages 256-272, January.
    6. Michael P. Dooley & David Folkerts-Landau & Peter M. Garber, 2005. "An essay on the revived Bretton Woods system," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Feb.
    7. Alan Greenspan, 2004. "The Evolving U.S. Payments Imbalance and Its Impact on Europe and the Rest of the World," Cato Journal, Cato Journal, Cato Institute, vol. 24(1-2), pages 1-11, Spring/Su.
    8. Michael F. Bryan & Bruce A. Champ & Jennifer K. Ransom, 2000. "Who is that guy on the $10 bill?," Economic Commentary, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, issue Jun.
    9. Maurice Obstfeld & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2005. "Global Current Account Imbalances and Exchange Rate Adjustments," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 36(1), pages 67-146.
    10. Lane, Philip & Milesi-Ferretti, Gian Maria, "undated". "External Wealth of Nations," Instructional Stata datasets for econometrics extwealth, Boston College Department of Economics.
    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. William Milberg, 2007. "Is the Sky Falling?:," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(6), pages 91-108.
    2. Jan Priewe, 2010. "What Went Wrong? Alternative interpretations of the global financial crisis," Competence Centre on Money, Trade, Finance and Development 1002, Hochschule fuer Technik und Wirtschaft, Berlin.
    3. Riccardo Fiorentini & Guido Montani, 2012. "The New Global Political Economy," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14443.
    4. De Grauwe, Paul & Rovira Kaltwasser, Pablo, 2012. "Animal spirits in the foreign exchange market," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 36(8), pages 1176-1192.
    5. Cavalli, Fausto & Naimzada, Ahmad & Pecora, Nicolò & Pireddu, Marina, 2018. "Market sentiment and heterogeneous fundamentalists in an evolutive financial market mode," MPRA Paper 90289, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    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. Maurice Obstfeld & Kenneth Rogoff, 2007. "The Unsustainable US Current Account Position Revisited," NBER Chapters, in: G7 Current Account Imbalances: Sustainability and Adjustment, pages 339-376, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Herrmann, Sabine & Winkler, Adalbert, 2009. "Real convergence, financial markets, and the current account - Emerging Europe versus emerging Asia," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 100-123, August.
    3. Yongsung Chang & Sun-Bin Kim & Jaewoo Lee, 2013. "Accounting for Global Dispersion of Current Accounts," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 16(3), pages 477-496, July.
    4. Laura Alfaro & Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan & Vadym Volosovych, 2014. "Sovereigns, Upstream Capital Flows, And Global Imbalances," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 12(5), pages 1240-1284, October.
    5. 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.
    6. Philip R. Lane & Sergio L. Schmukler, 2006. "The international financial integration of China and India," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Jun.
    7. Maurice Obstfeld, 2006. "Implications for the Yen of Japanese Current Account Adjustment," Monetary and Economic Studies, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan, vol. 24(S1), pages 27-38, December.
    8. 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.
    9. Edwards, Sebastian, 2006. "The U.S. current account deficit: Gradual correction or abrupt adjustment?," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 629-643, September.
    10. Lars Calmfors & Giancarlo Corsetti & Seppo Honkapohja & John Kay & Gilles Saint-Paul & Hans-Werner Sinn & Jan-Egbert Sturm & Xavier Vives, 2006. "Chapter 2: Global Imbalances," EEAG Report on the European Economy, CESifo, vol. 0, pages 50-67, March.
    11. Ho-don Yan & Cheng-lang Yang, 2012. "Does an Undervalued Currency Merit Economic Growth? – Evidence from Taiwan," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 59(1), pages 37-57, March.
    12. Jean-Baptiste Gossé, 2009. "The Real and Financial Implications of the Global Saving Glut: A Three-Country Model," Working Papers hal-00380417, HAL.
    13. Agnès Bénassy‐Quéré & Lionel Fontagné & Horst Raff, 2011. "Exchange‐rate Misalignments in Duopoly: The Case of Airbus and Boeing," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(4), pages 623-641, April.
    14. Linda S Goldberg, 2009. "Understanding Banking Sector Globalization," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 56(1), pages 171-197, April.
    15. Evans, Martin D.D., 2014. "External balances, trade flows and financial conditions," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(PB), pages 271-290.
    16. Marcus Hagedorn, 2017. "An Equilibrium Theory of Determinate Nominal Exchange Rates, Current Accounts and Asset Flows," 2017 Meeting Papers 1310, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    17. Philipp Engler & Michael Fidora & Christian Thimann, 2009. "External Imbalances and the US Current Account: How Supply‐Side Changes Affect an Exchange Rate Adjustment," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(5), pages 927-941, November.
    18. Bruce N. Lehmann & David M. Modest, 1985. "The Empirical Foundations of the Arbitrage Pricing Theory I: The Empirical Tests," NBER Working Papers 1725, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Rajeswari Sengupta, 2014. "Firm dollar debt and central bank dollar reserves: Empirical evidence from Latin America," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2014-013, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.
    20. Sabine Herrmann & Joern Kleinert, 2014. "Lucas Paradox and Allocation Puzzle - Is the euro area different?," Graz Economics Papers 2014-01, University of Graz, Department of Economics.

    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:cdl:econwp:qt7j3436bf. 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: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ibbrkus.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.