Download or read book The External Wealth of Nations written by Mr. Gian-Maria Milesi-Ferretti and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1999-08-01 with total page 59 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Capital flows are closely monitored, but surprisingly little is known about the stocks of external assets and liabilities held by countries, especially in the developing world. This paper constructs estimates of foreign assets and liabilities and their equity and debt subcomponents for 66 industrial and developing countries for the period 1970-97. It explores the sensitivity of estimates of stock positions to the treatment of valuation effects not captured in balance of payments data. Finally, it characterizes the stylized facts of estimated stocks and asks whether there are trends in net foreign asset positions and differences in debt-equity ratios across countries.