Causes and Consequences of Economic Imbalances: Comparison of US-Asia and Europe (PDF)

Introduction:
Problem and Objective:
'The economic health of every country is a proper matter of concern to all its neighbors, near and far.' Franklin D. Roosevelt.
This quotation reflects the importance of economic imbalances for the global economic environment. As seen in the past, huge economic imbalances of emerging countries have resulted in a number of crises such as the Mexican tequila crisis, Asian crisis or the Argentine crisis. In the past ten years, major economic imbalances have been concentrating among a small number of countries. The main deficit countries such as USA and Spain have been mirrored by current account surplus countries in Asia, Middle East as well as in Europe. Already in 2004, the persistency and growing size of the global imbalances have led to the speculation about a disorderly unwinding in the future. In 2007, the global financial crisis started in USA and rapidly spread across major economies due to the high financial integration. Out of the financial crisis, the current eurozone crisis developed which is posing a major threat to the global economy.
'Global imbalances can be defined as widening external positions of systemically important economies that reflect distortions or entail risks for the global economy.' External positions are shown in the current accounts which show huge deficits or surpluses caused by distortions or/and pose a risk for the global economy. Distortions can arise due to policy decisions taken by the public or private sector. The current account development of a single European country does not fit the definition, but a country's possible contagion effect in case of a crisis and the overall European development is systemically important and poses a significant risk to the global economy. Hence, in the author's point-of-view the current account development from US-Asia as well as the intra-euro economic imbalances can be considered as global imbalances. [...]