The Missing Wealth of Nations: Are Europe and the U.S. net Debtors or net Creditors?

Article dans une revue: This article shows that official statistics substantially underestimate the net foreign asset positions of rich countries because they fail to capture most of the assets held by households in offshore tax havens. Drawing on a unique Swiss data set and exploiting systematic anomalies in countries' portfolio investment positions, I find that around 8% of the global financial wealth of households is held in tax havens, three-quarters of which goes unrecorded. On the basis of plausible assumptions, accounting for unrecorded assets turns the eurozone, officially the world's second largest net debtor, into a net creditor. It also reduces the U.S. net debt significantly. The results shed new light on global imbalances and challenge the widespread view that after a decade of poor-to-rich capital flows, external assets are now in poor countries and debts in rich countries. I provide concrete proposals to improve international statistics.

Auteur(s)

Gabriel Zucman

Revue
  • Quarterly Journal of Economics
Date de publication
  • 2013
Mots-clés JEL
F32 H26 H87
Mots-clés
  • Finance
  • Tax
Pages
  • 1321-1364
Version
  • 1
Volume
  • 128