Category Archives: Current Accounts

Japan’s Net Income Surplus and Its Exchange Rate

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Japan’s current account surplus may not be a surprise to those of us who remember Japan as a major exporter. But a closer examination shows that the current account surpluses recorded today are not due to the trade account but rather the net primary income balance. Japan used the trade surpluses of the 1970s and 1980s to build up its holdings of foreign assets and prepare for the day when it would need income from abroad to pay for its aging population. Last year, according to The Economist, the country earned a net $269 billion on its primary income balance, equal to 6% of its GDP.

Mariana Colacelli, Deepali Gautam and Cyril Rebillard of the IMF examine Japan’s income balance in their 2021 working paper,“ Japan’s Foreign Assets and Liabilities: Implications for the External Accounts.” They point out that the surplus reflects Japan’s status as a net creditor nation, as shown by its Net Investment Income Position of $5.4 billion, which equals 63% of its GDP.  The surplus reflects higher yields on its foreign assets than its liabilities , including both foreign direct investment as well as portfolio equity and debt assets. The U.S., on the other hand, has a surplus on FDI income but a deficit on its portfolio-related return.

Japan’s income balance is negatively corelated to its trade balance, and this relationship holds for other countries. They cite several factors that could be relevant in Japan’s case, including:

  • aging population, which uses its assets to finance consumption (including imports);
  • income effect, which boosts spending on imports;
  • offshoring by multinationals, which shifts income from exports to income received from the multinationals’ subsidiaries.

Colacell, Gautam and Rebillard also study the response of the income balance to changes in the real exchange rate in order to compare this with the response of the trade balance. An appreciation of the real exchange rate in a country like Japan with a large net creditor position would likely lead to a decrease in the income balance, reinforcing the expected trade response to an appreciation. On the other hand, a currency appreciation in a net debtor nation would most likely lead to an increase in the income balance, which would lead to an income surplus that could offset the trade response.

They present evidence of negative responses in the income balance to an appreciation. This result differs from that reported of Takahiro Hattori, Ayako Tomita and Kohei Asao in a new working paper from the Policy Research Institute of the Japan’s Ministry of Finance, “The Accumulation of Income Balance and Its Relationship with Real Exchange Rate: Evidence from Japan.” They use data from 1999 through 2020 and find that the real exchange rate does not have a significant impact on Japan’s real exchange rate.

They expand their empirical analysis to a panel of 39 countries, and find again that the estimates of the real exchange rate impact on the income balance are insignificant. These results are similar to those reported by Enrique Alberola of the IMF with Ángel Estrada and Francesca Viana of the Bank of Spain in their 2020 paper in the Journal of International Money and Finance, “Global Imbalances from a Stock Perspective: The Asymmetry between Creditors and Debtors.” (BIS working paper version here). They investigated the impact of the role of the net income balance on the adjustment of the current account via the real exchange rate using annual data from 1980-2015, but found no evidence of such an effect. I also looked at the response of the income balance to the dollar exchange rate in 26 emerging market countries during the period of 1998– 2015  in my 2020 paper in the Review of International Economics, “The Sources of International Investment Income in Emerging Market Economics”, and did not find evidence of an impact of the exchange rate.

Further evidence on this channel of transmission to current account imbalances via the exchange rate impact on the net income balance appears in Alberto Behar and Ramin Hasan’s of the IMF in their 2022 working paper, “The Current Income Balance: External Adjustment Channel or Vulnerability Amplifier?” They did find evidence of a significant effect of the exchange rate on income credits and debits. However, these effects are relatively small when compared with the impact on the trade balance.

Japan’s net income balance, therefore, may an outlier in terms of its size and position in that country’s current income. However, the increasing importance of net income balances and their impact on a country’s balance of payments will necessitate further work on this topic. In particular, the role of the exchange rate in determining the primary income balance canl be further examined.

International Factor Income in 2020

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The sharp contraction in economic activity in the first half of 2020 due to the COVID pandemic was followed by a slow and uneven recovery in the second half of the year. The decline slowed global trade and capital flows, although not as much as initially expected. The economc slowdown also lowered investment income and remittances, the two main forms of international factor income payments. (There is also rent received on property.) Will these also recover as economic growth resumes?

Net investment income appears in the current account of the balance of payments as part of net primary income. For most countries FDI income is the largest component of investment income, followed by portfolio (equity and debt) income and other (mainly bank) income. The largest net recipients of FDI income are the U.S., Japan, Germany and France, all home countries for multinationals. Emerging markets economies that attract FDI flows, such as India and China, are major net payers of FDI income. Ireland, which attracts multinationals with its low corporate tax rates and its proximity to continental Europe, also records large FDI income deficits.

The latest issue of the OECD’s FDI in Figures reports FDI income for 2020 for the OECD area. Total FDI receipts were $1.80 trillion and payments were $1.04 trillion, which result in net FDI income payments of $418 billion. Almost three-quarters of the OECD income earnings were paid out to the parent countries, with the remainder reinvested in the host countries.

As expected, the 2020 FDI income flows represented declines from those of 2019, which the OECD attributed to the pandemic. The percent changes—a drop in receipts of 16% and of 15% in payments—were similar to those recorded during the global financial crisis. Moreover, the 2019 earnings were below those of 2018 due to slowing economic growth.

A recovery in FDI income will depend in part on the future course of FDI flows. Global FDI flows decreased by 38% in 2020 to $846 billion, their lower level since 2005. When scaled by GDP, they represented 1% of world GDP, the lowest relative level since 1999. In the OECD area, much of this decline was driven by disinvestments from Switzerland and the Netherlands, which serve as financial centers for companies with headquarters in other countries. The OECD reports a rise in cross-border mergers and acquisitions in the second half of 2020 and the first quarter to 2021.

The outlook for FDI-associated income also depends on the outcome of the talks sponsored by the OECD to harmonize the rules governing how tax rights are determined amongst jurisdictions, and also to set a minimum global tax rate. Multinational firms have been able to take advantage of the differences in corporate tax rates among nations by basing their operations in tax havens such as Luxembourg and Bermuda. If the negotiating parties come to an agreement, multinational firms will have to reassess the locations of their operations. They are most likely to cut back their use of the tax havens, but how they will restructure their activities and the impact on global supply chains is not clear.

There is also uncertainty over the impact of government policies on multinational investments. The U.S. and Chinese governments have indicated that they want to build up their respective domestic capacities in a number of areas, and will use trade and financial restrictions to promote domestic suppliers while limiting foreign access. Controls on inward FDI, for example, are used to deny foreign firms and governments access to domestic technology. Trade barriers also inhibit companies from expanding their operations, and the Biden administration has indicated that it will take an aggressive response to what it perceives as unfair Chinese policies.

Remittances fared better in 2020, according to the World Bank, falling to $540 billion, only 1.6% below the previous year’s level. With the exception of China, remittances exceeded the total of FDI flows and financial assistance to developing countries. The true value may be higher since not all remittances are recorded. The largest recipients in absolute terms were India, China, Mexico, the Philippines and Egypt, all countries with large labor forces. The U.S. was the largest source of the remittances, followed by the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the Russian Federation.

Why were remittances so strong? Gabriella Cova of the Atlantic Council writes that many migrants believed that conditions in their home countries were worse than in their host countries, and continued to send money home. Consequently, the reminttances were counter-cyclical for the recipient countries, partially offsetting the domestic economic contraction. The migrants who retained jobs in “essential” sectors were able to send money to their home countries. Moreover, the appreciation of the dollar increased the domestic values of their payments.

The future for migrants and their remittances, like FDI, is also uncertain. Developed countries with aging workforces will increasingly need migrants to take the place of native-born workers. On the other hand, the closure of borders during the pandemic may reinforce the trend to technological solutions. Japan, for example, has been developing robotic care for the health sector. Border control is a contentious area of public policy, although the pandemic also demonstrated the need for workers to undertake basic tasks in food production, distribution and delivery.

International factor payments have become increasingly important components of the balance of payments. Depending upon their value, they can either offset or amplify a trade account deficit (see Forbes, Hjortsoe and Nenova 2016). They also distinguish GDP from GNP, and can affect income inequality in both the home and host countries. The COVID pandemic disrupted them, particularly FDI income, and their future depends on how capital and labor flows are restructured after the pandemic.

The Return of Global Imbalances?

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The global economic contraction following the pandemic has led to a massive fiscal response. Governments have acknowledged the need to increase spending in order to offset the declines in consumption and investment. The decreases in public savings can lead to rising current account deficits that offset the capital inflows needed to cover the gap between savings and investment. But will these measures generate a return to the global imbalances that preceded the global financial crisis?

The IMF’s External Sector Report for 2020, subtitled Global Imbalances and the COVID-19 Crisis, appeared in August (see a summary here). The analysis was based on data from 2019, when the global current account imbalance (the absolute sum of all surpluses and deficits) fell by 0.2 of a percentage point to 2.9% of global GDP. But the report’s authors also considered the impact of the pandemic on countries’ balance of payments.

The IMF’s analysis suggested that about 40% of the 2019 current account positions were excessive. Larger than warranted surpluses were registered by Germany and the Netherlands, while deficits were larger than warranted in Canada, the U.K. and the U.S. China’s external position was in line with its fundamentals and policies.

In the report the IMF anticipated that in 2020 the U.S. would report a current account deficit equal to 0.5% of world GDP. Canada and the U.K.’s deficits were each projected to be equal in value to about 0.1% of global output. China was expected to register a surplus of about 0.2% of world GDP, as were Germany and Japan. These forecasts come with a large degree of uncertainty, and the report’s authors acknowledge that global financial stress could lead to more capital flow reversals and larger imbalances.

More recent data show clearly that the U.S. and China are running the largest current account imbalances in absolute terms. Brad Setser of the Council on Foreign Relations points out that Chinese firms have benefitted from the demand for electronic goods as workers stay at home, as well as the need for personal protective equipment. Moreover, the Chinese government has supported its firms that export, with less direct support for households. The U.S. has provided more direct support to households.

The fiscal responses of the two countries to the pandemic also differ. The Economist estimates that the 2020 U.S. budget balance will show a deficit equal to 15.3% of its GDP, while China’s deficit is estimated at 5.6% of GDP. Part of the U.S. fiscal deficit will be offset by household savings, which increased last spring to over 30% of disposable income. The savings rate has slowly come down since then, while households attempt to plan their spending in a world of uncertainty. If the recovery in the U.S. stalls and there is no additional fiscal stimulus, then households will be forced to dip into their savings.

The IMF’s current account forecasts are consistent with the analysis of  Matthew Klein and Michael Pettis in their recent book, Trade Wars Are Class Wars: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace.  The authors claim that these imbalances reflect domestic policies that privilege the more affluent members of a country. The trade wars that divide nations reflect divisions within these countries between asset owners and workers.

Klein and Pettis attribute China’s surpluses, for example, to government decisions in the 1990s to foster development through investments and exports while suppressing Chinese consumption in order to generate savings. The government has since acknowledged this imbalance and sought to rebalance domestic spending, in part by promoting consumption expenditures while curbing shadow banking. But whenever economic growth has slowed, the government has responded by encouraging new investment, including housing, and total credit to the private sector has grown to 216% of GDP.

Similarly, Germany’s current account surpluses reflect its policies designed to encourage growth after the decade of the 1990s, when the costs of reunification weighed down the economy. There was a conscious decision to encourage savings, a shift that benefited capital owners at the expense of labor. Until this year the government took pride in its balanced budgets, despite a need for infrastructure spending. The high personal savings rate reflects in part a high degree of income inequality, with most gains going to those households more likely to save them. There was also an emphasis on the country’s external position, and wage increases were limited in order to hold down costs.

The increases in foreign savings were matched by capital flows to the U.S. These reflected the U.S. position as the financial hegemon, with the most liquid financial markets. Moreover, the U.S. provided something of great value: safe assets. U.S. Treasury bonds have been the preferred asset of central banks and European savers, although before the 2008-09 financial crisis mortgage backed securities with AAA ratings were seen as acceptable substitutes. The financial sector within the U.S. benefitted from the increase in domestic and foreign financial activity. But the capital inflows appreciated the dollar, which undermined the export sector. In the years leading up to the global financial crisis the Federal Reserve kept interest rates low in order to boost spending. A weak recovery after that crisis caused the Federal Reserve to continue its low interest rate policy.

The pandemic has brought a return to past conditions. Whether or not the most recent increase in the Chinese trade surplus is a transitory phenomenon, its current account is on track to record a surplus for the year (although at a much lower level than before the global financial crisis). Similarly, while Germany’s budget balance is forecast to show a deficit of 7.2% of its GDP for the year, its current account is expected to register a surplus equal in value to almost 6% of its GDP.  The U.S. current account deficit, which peaked at 6% of GDP in 2005, was equal in value to 3.5% of GDP in the second quarter of this year.

Klein and Pettis write that past global imbalances reflected a complementarity of interests between American financiers and Chinese and German industrialists, and reinforced inequality.  To change these patterns requires policy reorientations within these countries that will allow more income to be transferred to households. They admit that this is a difficult task, but point out that a new system was devised by the Allied nations at Bretton Woods in 1944 in order to guarantee living standards. The upheaval produced by the pandemic is global in nature and has the potential to bring about another policy transformation. The one necessary element that will be contested by those who profit from current arrangements is the political will.