Publication

The ongoing global financial crisis has been preceded by a steady rise in global current account imbalances. Recently, in the course of the global recession, global imbalances have declined, albeit without having disappeared completely. As the outlook for global growth gets brighter, it is important to be aware of the possibility of again arising global imbalances in the future as it is unlikely that the structural reasons that have led to the imbalances in the past have vanished thoroughly. In this contribution we discuss the nature of the global imbalances of the past, describe structural factors that caused them and ask to what extent these factors have changed, and propose policy options that may contribute to improving the situation in the future.