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Discussion Paper
Measuring U.S. Cross-Border Securities Flows: New Data and A Guide for Researchers
Understanding the effects of capital flows across countries depends critically on accurate and comprehensive data. For the U.S., data on cross-border securities holdings and transactions are collected through the TIC (Treasury International Capital) data system. As we have previously noted, it has long been difficult to reconcile the TIC data on securities holdings with the TIC S transactions data (see Bertaut and Tryon (2007) and Bertaut and Judson (2014, 2022)).
Discussion Paper
Estimating U.S. Cross-Border Securities Flows: Ten Years of the TIC SLT
The Treasury International Capital (TIC) system collects cross-border securities positions and transactions data and is the primary source of information on foreign official and private demand for U.S. Treasuries and other U.S. securities, as well as for U.S. investment in foreign securities. As noted in earlier work, though, the TIC system currently collects data separately on holdings of securities (the monthly TIC SLT and the annual SHL/SHC collections) and on transactions, the TIC S, and these two data streams can be difficult to reconcile, making interpretation of movements in the data ...
Discussion Paper
Recent Euro-area Inflows into U.S. Bonds: Reconciling and Understanding New Data Sources
In this note we review the data on U.S. cross-border financial flows and positions with a focus on one question of current interest: have euro-area investors been increasing their holdings of U.S. securities since the possibility of European Central Bank quantitative easing (ECB QE) emerged in the latter half of 2014? The prospect of ECB QE, combined with the prospect of U.S. policy rate liftoff, suggested that U.S. interest rates would soon exceed euro-area rates by a wide margin, which might have provided an incentive for euro-area investors to seek higher-yielding U.S. assets, especially ...
Discussion Paper
Should We Be Concerned Again About U.S. Current Account Sustainability?
In this note, we compare the present situation to that prevailing in the mid-2000s, when concerns about the NIIP and the current account were at the forefront, and we examine the prospects for U.S. external sustainability going forward.
Discussion Paper
The International Role of the U.S. Dollar
For most of the last century, the preeminent role of the U.S. dollar in the global economy has been supported by the size and strength of the U.S. economy, its stability and openness to trade and capital flows, and strong property rights and the rule of law. As a result, the depth and liquidity of U.S. financial markets is unmatched, and there is a large supply of extremely safe dollar-denominated assets.
Working Paper
How long can the unsustainable U.S. current account deficit be sustained?
This paper addresses three questions about the prospects for the U.S. current account deficit. Is it sustainable in the long term? If not, how long will it take for measures of external debt and debt service to reach levels that could prompt some pullback by global investors? And if and when such levels are breached, how readily would asset prices respond and the current account start to narrow? ; To address these questions, we start with projections of a detailed partial-equilibrium model of the U.S. balance of payments. Based on plausible assumptions of the key drivers of the U.S. external ...
Working Paper
ABS inflows to the United States and the global financial crisis
The "global saving glut" (GSG) hypothesis argues that the surge in capital inflows from emerging market economies to the United States led to significant declines in long-term interest rates in the United States and other industrial economies. In turn, these lower interest rates, when combined with both innovations and deficiencies of the U.S. credit market, are believed to have contributed to the U.S. housing bubble and to the buildup in financial vulnerabilities that led to the financial crisis. Because the GSG countries for the most part restricted their U.S. purchases to Treasuries and ...
Working Paper
International capital flows and the returns to safe assets in the United States, 2003-2007
A broad array of domestic institutional factors--including problems with the originate-to-distribute model for mortgage loans, deteriorating lending standards, deficiencies in risk management, conflicting incentives for the GSEs, and shortcomings of supervision and regulation--were the primary sources of the U.S. housing boom and bust and the associated financial crisis. In addition, the extended rise in U.S. house prices was likely also supported by long-term interest rates (including mortgage rates) that were surprisingly low, given the level of short-term rates and other macro ...
Journal Article
Recent developments in cross-border investment in securities
Securities have replaced bank lending in recent years as the primary means through which funds are invested internationally, and in the process, the share of U.S. securities owned by foreigners has grown markedly. Between 1974 and 2002, the proportion of the value of outstanding U.S. long-term securities (equities and long-term debt) that was foreign-owned increased from about 5 percent to about 12 percent. At the same time, U.S. holdings of foreign long-term securities also increased, although their growth did not match the rapid growth in foreign holdings of U.S. securities. At $1.8 ...
Discussion Paper
Measuring U.S. Cross-Border Securities Flows: New Data and A Guide for Researchers
Understanding the effects of capital flows across countries depends critically on accurate and comprehensive data. For the U.S., data on cross-border securities holdings and transactions are collected through the TIC (Treasury International Capital) data system. As we have previously noted, it has long been difficult to reconcile the TIC data on securities holdings with the TIC S transactions data (see Bertaut and Tryon (2007) and Bertaut and Judson (2014, 2022)).