Global Imbalances as Constraints to the Economic Activity in the World Economy

Since the beginning of the 2000s, the phenomenon of the global imbalances has been the object of special attention by economists and the international institutions. As we will see later, before the crisis there was a clear division between those that interpreted these imbalances as a disequilibrium and those that argued that they were a new kind of world equilibrium (the so-called ‘Bretton Woods II’ hypothesis), where the countries with current account surpluses were financing the countries with current account deficits. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.