Credit Constraints and Growth in a Global Economy

In a period of rapid integration and accelerated growth in emerging markets, three striking trends have been (1) a divergence in the private saving rates of emerging markets and advanced economies, (2) large net capital outflows from emerging markets, and (3) a sustained decline in the world interest rate. This paper shows that in a multi-period OLG model, the interaction between growth and household credit constraints --- more severe in emerging markets --- is able to account for all of the above facts. We provide micro-level evidence that corroborates our mechanism: saving behaviors across age groups in the U.S. and China are broadly supportive of the predictions of the model.