Business cycles are less volatile in rich countries than in poor ones. They are also more synchronized with the world cycle. The authors develop two alternative but noncompeting explanations for those facts. Both explanations proceed from the observation that the law of comparative advantage...

A look at the data reveals that in OECD countries, economic fluctuations exhibit a high degree of synchronization. In 1965-90, cross-country contemporaneous GDP growth correlations averaged 45 percent. This suggests that a central element of any theory of economic fluctuations should be an...

Capital flows to developing countries are small and take mostly the form of loans rather than direct foreign investment. We build a simple model of North-South capital flows that highlights the interplay between diminishing returns, production risk and sovereign risk. This model generates a set...

The authors reexamine a classic question in international economics: What is the current account response to a transitory income shock such as a temporary improvement in the terms of trade, a transfer from abroad, or unusually high production? To answer this question, they construct a world...

How do countries hold their financial wealth? We construct a new database of countries' claims on capital located at home and abroad, and international borrowing and lending, covering 68 countries from 1966-97. We find that a small amount of capital flows from rich countries to poor countries....

Business cycles are both less volatile and more synchronized with the world cycle in rich countries than in poor ones. We develop two alternative explanations based on the idea that comparative advantage causes rich countries to specialize in industries that use new technologies operated by...

Over the past decade the US has experienced widening current account deficits and a steady deterioration of its net foreign asset position. During the second half of the 1990s, this deterioration was fueled by foreign investment in a booming US stock market. During the first half of the 2000s,...