Asset price changes, external wealth and global welfare

Abstract

U.S. equity outperformance and sustained dollar appreciation have led to large valuation gains for the rest of the world on the U.S. external position. I construct their global distribution, carefully accounting for the role of tax havens. Valuation gains are concentrated and large in developed countries, while developing countries have been mostly bypassed. To assess the welfare implications of these capital gains, I adopt a sufficient statistics approach. In contrast to the large wealth changes, most countries so far did not benefit much in welfare terms. This is because they did not rebalance their portfolios and realize their gains. In contrast, direct welfare effects from the dollar appreciation on import and export prices are an order of magnitude larger.