1.1. What are potential long-run costs of being a large debtor nation? The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was created in 1944 as part of the Bretton Woods conference described in the appendix to this chapter. Its principal purpose is to promote the stability of the international monetary system.

As part of its mandate, the IMF collects data on trade and finances across the world. Christine Lagarde has run the IMF since 2011.

One of the measures that the IMF uses to assess the financial condition of various nations is the NIIP, a country’s net international investment position. NIIP is the difference between a country’s external financial assets and its external financial liabilities. Based on these data, we typically describe nations as net creditors or net debtors. So who are the big creditor and debtor nations looked at this way