Policy brief

Global imbalances: time for action

Publishing date
01 March 2007

Increasing nervousness in world financial markets give new relevance to the long-standing issues of global current account adjustment. It reminds policymakers that this adjustment, if improperly managed, could lead to further drops in assets prices, disruptions in the global trading system, and possible world recession. The authors of this Policy Brief assess how to achieve an orderly reduction in the large and unsustainable global current account imbalances. The Policy Brief is the result of a joint conference held in Washington, D.C. on February 8 and 9 2007.

About the authors

  • Jean Pisani-Ferry

    Jean Pisani-Ferry is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel, the European think tank, and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute (Washington DC). He is also a professor of economics with Sciences Po (Paris).

    He sits on the supervisory board of the French Caisse des Dépôts and serves as non-executive chair of I4CE, the French institute for climate economics.

    Pisani-Ferry served from 2013 to 2016 as Commissioner-General of France Stratégie, the ideas lab of the French government. In 2017, he contributed to Emmanuel Macron’s presidential bid as the Director of programme and ideas of his campaign. He was from 2005 to 2013 the Founding Director of Bruegel, the Brussels-based economic think tank that he had contributed to create. Beforehand, he was Executive President of the French PM’s Council of Economic Analysis (2001-2002), Senior Economic Adviser to the French Minister of Finance (1997-2000), and Director of CEPII, the French institute for international economics (1992-1997).

    Pisani-Ferry has taught at University Paris-Dauphine, École Polytechnique, École Centrale and the Free University of Brussels. His publications include numerous books and articles on economic policy and European policy issues. He has also been an active contributor to public debates with regular columns in Le Monde and for Project Syndicate.

  • Alan Ahearne

    Alan Ahearne is a Professor and the Head of Economics at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He is a member of the Board of the Central Bank of Ireland and has served as adviser to the IMF. He is Chairman of the ESRI and Department of Finance Joint Research Programme on the Macro-economy and Taxation.

    Alan served as economic adviser to Ireland’s former Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan from 2009 to 2011.

    Alan obtained his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University (in Pittsburgh) in 1998 and subsequently joined the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, where he worked as a Senior Economist for seven years.

    His research at Bruegel has focused on macroeconomics, international finance and public policy, including macroeconomic adjustment in the euro area, reform of the euro area and governance of the EU, global current account imbalances, housing booms and busts, and the international experience with banking and financial crises.

  • William Cline

  • Yung Chul Park

    Yung Chul Park is a distinguished professor in the division of international studies, Korea University. He previously served as the chief economic adviser to the President of Korea, as president of the Korea Development Institute, and as president of the Korea Institute of Finance. He also worked for the International Monetary Fund. He has written and edited several books including Monetary and Financial Cooperation in East Asia: The Relavance of European Experience (Oxford University Press, 2010).

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