International Risk Sharing During the Globalization Era

International Risk Sharing During the Globalization Era
ISBN-10
1451873565
ISBN-13
9781451873566
Category
Business & Economics
Pages
40
Language
English
Published
2009-09-01
Publisher
International Monetary Fund
Authors
Mr.Robert P. Flood, Mr.Akito Matsumoto, Ms.Nancy P. Marion

Description

Though theory suggests financial globalization should improve international risk sharing, empirical support has been limited. We develop a simple welfare-based measure that captures how far countries are from the ideal of perfect risk sharing. We then take it to data and find international risk sharing has, indeed, improved during globalization. Improved risk sharing comes mostly from the convergence in rates of consumption growth among countries rather than from synchronization of consumption at the business cycle frequency. Our finding explains why many existing measures fail to detect improved risk sharing-they focus only on risk sharing at the business cycle frequency.

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