摘要：After the recent crisis, a reduction was observed in global current account (“flow”) imbalances.Even so, global disequilibria as measured in terms of countries’ net foreign assets (“stockimbalances”) kept increasing. This paper discusses whether stock imbalances have astabilising or destabilising impact on countries’ accumulation of external wealth. That is, docreditor economies, by virtue of their positive stock of net foreign assets, keep accumulating–everything else equal— external wealth? Do debtor countries, due to their negative net foreignassets position, keep accumulating external debt? Our results show that in debtor economiesthe existing stock of net debt helps to limit current account deficits, thus halting future debtaccumulation. In creditor countries, however, the positive stock of net foreign assetscontributes –everything else equal— to increase future current account surpluses, potentiallyleading to destabilising dynamics in wealth accumulation. This asymmetry between creditorsand debtors holds in spite of the stabilising impact that net foreign assets have on the tradebalance of creditor countries through real exchange rate fluctuations, and might have majorimplications for global trade and growth.
关键词：global imbalances; current account; international investment position; external;debt; growth.
