3 The World Economy
For a variety of reasons, many of which I mentioned in the introduction, as
of late the world has been experiencing a situation in which assets are in
short supply. In essence, globalization spreads the shortages from specific
regions to the world at large. While many of the elements of the analysis
in the previous section extend to this context, there are two key differences
and considerations. First, not all regions of the world are equal in their
ability to supply financial assets, and hence the global shortage of assets
leads to large capital gains and flows toward the asset-producing regions of
the world. Second, an important factor behind the significant potential for
crises in emerging markets is the existence of a large number of assets that
can substitute for local assets at a moment’s notice. This is not the case
for the world as a whole or for a large economy like the US. These are the
themes we develop in Caballero et al (2006a) and, in particular, in Caballero
et al (2006b).