Does financial openness explain the increase of global imbalances before the crisis of 2008?

We investigate whether financial openness has played a major role in the evolution of global imbalances over the period before the crisis of 2008. We estimate, with panel regression techniques, the impact of financial openness on medium run trends in current account imbalances for industrialized and emerging countries by using a de jure measure of financial openness and a de facto measure of financial openness. Nowadays, current account imbalances are larger in reason of higher capital mobility. Nevertheless, a large part of imbalances may be considered as unrelated with the evolution of macroeconomic fundamentals.