Credit Constraints and Growth in a Global Economy

Abstract

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. Key Words: Globalization, capital flows, credit constraints, saving and current account imbalances, life-cycle household savings.

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