Narrow Results

The case for stabilizing China's exchange rate against the dollar is strong. Before 2005 when the yuan/dollar rate was credibly fixed, it helped anchor China's domestic price level. But gradual RMB appreciation from July 2005 to July 2008 created a "one-way-bet" that disordered China's financial markets in two respects: (i) no private capital outflows to finance China's huge trade surplus leading to an undue build up of official exchange reserves and erosion of monetary control, and (ii) a breakdown of the forward exchange market in 2007–2008 so that exporters could no longer get trade credit — probably worsening the severe slump in Chinese exports. But after July 2008, the credit crunch induced an unexpected unwinding of the dollar carry trade leading to a sharp appreciation in the dollar's effective exchange rate. The People's Bank of China (PBC) then stopped RMB appreciation against the dollar. China's forward exchange market was restored and monetary control regained. Now the PBC can better support the fiscal stimulus by promoting a parallel expansion of bank credit. But, since March 2009, the fall in the dollar (with the RMB tied to it) again threatens to undermine the yuan/dollar rate and China's monetary stability.

This paper studies the effects of US quantitative easing (QE) on Asia by examining capital flows and financial markets. After the global financial crisis (GFC), Asian economies with more open and developed capital markets experienced greater swings in capital inflows. In particular, large capital flows manifest more in portfolio investment and other investment such as bank loans than in foreign direct investment. Empirical analysis shows QE, QE1 in particular, significantly contributed to the rebounding of capital inflows to the region after the onset of the crisis by lowering domestic yield rates as well as CDS premiums. Although the currency value responses differed across countries, it appears that economies with stable exchange rates roughly coincide with those in which house prices have been rising, suggesting that monetary easing of advanced countries have affected Asian countries through either appreciation of currency values or increases in the prices of housing.

This paper investigates the effectiveness of macroprudential policies introduced by Turkey in late 2010. The unprecedented quantitative easing policies of advanced countries after the global financial crisis have presented serious financial stability concerns for most emerging countries including Turkey. To cope with these challenges, Turkey has devised new policy tools such as asymmetric interest rate corridor and reserve option mechanism. From the perspective of capital flows, the interest rate corridor works mainly through stabilizing supply of foreign funds, and the reserve option mechanism through decreasing the sensitivity of equilibrium exchange rate to shifts in the demand for foreign funds. Using a large panel of 46 countries and employing [Bruno and Shin (2013a). Capital flows, cross-border banking and Global liquidity. Working paper, Princeton university; Bruno and Shin (2013b). Assessing macroprudential policies: Case of Korea. Working paper, Princeton university] methodology, we investigate whether the new policy framework in Turkey has been successful in cushioning the economy from volatile cross-border capital flows from a comparative perspective. The results show that, after controlling for a set of domestic and external variables and relative to a group of advanced and emerging countries, cross-border capital flows to Turkey have been less sensitive to global factors after the implementation of macroprudential policies.

Global financial integration intensified in the period leading up to the Great Financial Crisis, as was witnessed by the growth of cross-border banking, capital flows, and gross external capital positions. For small, open economies (SOEs) that have lifted restrictions on capital movements, global financial integration seems to have undermined the scope for independent monetary policy, even if these countries had adopted a flexible exchange rate regime. Monetary policy transmission was weakened through the interest rate channel, as long-term rates in SOEs became increasingly correlated with long rates in large, advanced countries. The exchange rate channel was unstable, however, with exchange rates diverging from fundamentals as uncovered interest rate parity failed to hold over relevant periods and capital flows were volatile. These tendencies can contribute to monetary and financial instability when they interact badly with other economic and financial risks that can face small, open, and financially integrated economies. This was the case in Iceland. A fundamental rethinking of policy frameworks and tools has been underway in SOEs in the wake of the crisis. Potential policy instruments include foreign exchange intervention, enhanced prudential rules on foreign exchange risks, macroprudential tools, better alignment of fiscal and monetary policy, and even selective capital flow management tools.

This paper investigates the threshold effects of population aging on economic growth using country-level panel data covering 98 countries from 1970 to 2015. The overall estimation results indicate significant nonlinear effects on economic growth of the share of the elderly in the total population, with the estimated threshold between 10.1% and 10.9%. Beyond the threshold, deeper population aging begins to have negative effects on economic growth. Second, most of the threshold effects comes from the group of non-OECD countries, i.e., low-income countries, while the insignificant and delayed threshold effects are found in OECD countries, i.e., high- and middle-income countries. Third, as net capital inflows grow, particularly by the debt type, they can increase long-run economic growth in OECD countries, while they overall cause to deteriorate it in non-OECD countries. And finally, for the OECD countries, the positive impacts of capital inflows on growth are partially cancelled out as heightening in degree of population aging. These findings are overall robust to alternative measure of population aging, old-age dependency ratio and alternative country groups such as using US$7,000 in GDP per capita 1990 as reference income level. These results suggest that sufficient human capital investment, adoption of high technologies, and development of economic institutions including financial and foreign exchange markets are recommended in response to upcoming negative effects of population aging on economic growth especially for low-income country.

With the impact of foreign exchange markets, risks in financial markets are becoming more complex and diversified, which underlines the importance of risk management in financial supervision. In this paper, China’s non-ferrous metal futures market is selected as the research object, and Shanghai Futures Exchange’s Industrial Metal Commodity Index (IMCI) data are used to measure risk using the conditional autoregressive value at risk (CAViaR) model. The US dollar index (USDX) is incorporated into the CAViaR model to study its impact on the risk. Through empirical analysis, we arrive at the following conclusions: First, the asymmetric slope CAViaR model (AS-CAViaR) is more suitable for measuring the risk in China’s non-ferrous metal futures market. Second, the risk is positively impacted by the lagged risk. Moreover, the impacts of positive and negative returns on the risk are asymmetric, with a negative return having a greater impact. Third, the positive and negative shock of USDX has significant and different impacts on the risk. These impacts can be caused by global capital flows. In addition, the impact of the vector of explanatory variables on the IMCI at different quantile levels is discussed based on the CAViaR-USDX model, which reflects the comprehensive advantages of the quantile regression method and the model’s applicability. The above conclusions verify the impact of USDX on China’s non-ferrous metal futures market and provide a theoretical basis and direction for risk monitoring.

In the international arena an increasing number of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists have succeeded, yielding both micro-level financial rewards and macro-level prosperity and improved economic conditions for many industrialized countries. The next logical "group," with a potential to reap such benefits, is expected to be the emerging economies. This study tabulates and analyzes an emerging market VC-investment dataset, and then identifying and testing a number of independent economic and financial factors that explain such investments for a selected group of emerging countries. Based on 1990-2003 data covering 19 nations, the regression results show four of the five proposed variables, namely GDP per capita, long-term capital inflows, stock market listings, and a measure of stock market correlations, to be significant in explaining VC investments.

Using samples of 25 emerging market countries (EMCs) and 22 industrial countries (ICs), we derive currency misalignment from estimating the equilibrium exchange rate based on the purchasing power parity theory and by considering the Balassa–Samuelson effect. We then examine factors affecting currency misalignment by focusing particularly on capital inflows and foreign exchange intervention (FEI). The empirical results show that unlike ICs, EMCs' foreign capital inflows — mainly the component of other investment — contribute to enhance currency misalignment through overvaluation. We also find that the resurgence of international capital inflows after 2000 and the policy responses from EMCs have a significant influence on currency misalignment. Although capital inflows could drive a currency to appreciate, aggressive FEI to engineer even larger capital outflows has kept EMCs' currencies factually undervalued. Reaping the benefits from capital inflows is still an illusion for EMCs.

India and Israel have raised over US$35 billion by tapping into the wealth of their diaspora communities. These diaspora bonds represent a stable and cheap source of external finance, often when countries lost access to international capital markets. For diaspora investors, these bonds offer the opportunity to help their country of origin while also providing an investment opportunity. The potential for diaspora bonds is significant for many countries with large diasporas abroad. However, diaspora bond issuance from countries with weak governance and high sovereign risk may require support for institutional capacity building and credit enhancement from multilateral or bilateral agencies. Haiti, for instance, could raise several hundred million dollars by issuing diaspora bonds provided a guarantee structure is created to build trust in the country's public institutions.

Managing capital flows is the key policy challenge for emerging economies like India in the aftermath of the crisis. In contrast to other emerging markets who are levying capital controls, India's macro-monetary framework is distinguished by significant restrictions that help manage inflows. Against this context, the paper characterises India's capital account management strategy through illustrating the 2006–2007 episode of capital inflows in the buildup to the global financial crisis. It shows how these restrictions allowed the authorities to straddle the open-economy trilemma and balance the exchange rate and price stability objectives. It offers relevant evidence on the effectiveness of India's capital controls in retaining monetary autonomy.

This paper examines the factors that determine banking flows from advanced economies to emerging markets. In addition to the usual determinants of capital flows in terms of global push and local pull factors, we examine the role of bilateral factors, such as growth differentials and economic size, as well as contagion factors and measures of the depth in financial interconnectedness between lenders and borrowers. We find profound differences across regions. In particular, in spite of the severe impact of the global financial crisis, emerging Europe stands out as a more stable region. Assuming that the determinants of banking flows remain unchanged in the presence of structural changes, we use these results to explore the short-term implications of Basel III capital regulations on banking flows to emerging markets.

This paper provides an empirical investigation of the medium-term determinants of international investment positions for a large sample of advanced and emerging economies. In addition to the usually considered drivers of foreign assets and liabilities, the analysis focuses on the role of structural policy indicators. Using cross-section and panel regression techniques the results suggest that structural policy settings are important medium-term drivers of capital flows, having a relatively large impact on gross and net foreign capital positions and on their composition. In particular, the results suggest that certain kinds of structural policy reform could help to narrow global imbalances, and to modify the composition of international capital flows towards more stable and productive sources.

The paper studies the determinants of various instruments of capital flows, using 34 emerging markets and developing economies over 2009Q3–2015Q4. The regressions are extended to focus on quarters with flows that are one standard deviation above/below mean. Overall, the capital flow slowdown in recent years is due to lower growth prospects of recipient countries and worsening global risk sentiment. However, there are considerable differences across instruments. The sensitivity of some flows, towards push/pull factors, increases during periods of extreme capital flows. The gap between the US long- and short-term maturity bond yields — insignificant during normal times — is important during high capital flow episodes.

The current paper investigates the impact of sovereign ratings on sudden stops of capital in the context of the Eurozone. Our analysis focuses on the qualitative aspect of ratings on the hypothesis that such aspect has a concrete impact on capital movements. A panel probit model is utilized for our purposes. We distinguish between net and gross capital inflows, while we also draw a distinction between long-term and short-term oriented capital. Our results confirm the influence of sovereign ratings for the majority of our model specifications. They also appear to be most significant in the case of short-term flows.

We critically analyze and compare the analytical structures of the international monetary and financial trilemmas. The first structure says that countries cannot have all three of fixed exchange rates, free capital mobility, and monetary autonomy. The second argues that countries cannot have all three of financial globalization, absence of financial crises, and financial autonomy. While the monetary trilemma is often described as being based on the Mundell–Fleming model, this is true only under the assumption of perfect capital mobility. Imperfect mobility can be caused by factors other than capital controls and in this case the constraints of the monetary trilemma need not be binding in the short run. In order to have a mechanism to provide balance of payments equilibrium, however, the theory of economic policy demonstrates that the monetary trilemma must be binding in the long run. While pointing to an important issue the financial trilemma formulation does not provide the most useful way to analyze the tradeoffs generated by financial globalization. More useful for this purpose is the literature on international externalities and public goods. We also argue that for many countries, giving up monetary autonomy will be more costly than giving up financial policy autonomy.

We investigate whether foreign purchases of long-term U.S. Treasury securities significantly affect their expected excess-returns. We run predictive regressions of realized excess returns on measures of net purchases of treasuries by both foreign official and private agents. We find that official flows, with a negative effect, appear similar to relative supply shocks; private flows, with a positive impact, resemble flows that absorb excess-supply and are thus compensated for this service, similar to the role of arbitrageurs. The results are robust to out-of-sample tests and the use of benchmark survey-consistent adjusted flows data.

Several studies have suggested that the prediction of standard theory on the effects of monetary policy on the exchange rate might not be applicable to or in the case of the Republic of Korea because participation of foreign investors is weak in the bond market but strong in the stock market. The current study examines the effects of monetary policy shocks on the exchange rate in the Republic of Korea by using structural vector autoregression models with sign restrictions. To determine the channels by which monetary policy shocks affect the exchange rate, I investigate the effects on various components of capital flows. The main empirical findings are as follows. First, a contractionary monetary policy shock, which increases the interest rate, appreciates the Korean won significantly in the short run as predicted by most theories. Second, contractionary monetary policy shocks increase capital inflows into the bond market consistent with the prediction of the uncovered interest parity condition. This seems to be the main channel by which contractionary monetary shocks appreciate the won. Finally, foreign investors tend to withdraw money from the domestic stock market in response to a monetary tightening, resulting in a decrease in capital inflows.

In contrast to the period prior to the 1997/98 Asian financial crisis, emerging East Asia today is a region with excess savings, particularly corporate savings. Beginning in the mid-2000s, liquidity was further amplified by massive capital flows, particularly bank-led flows, and subsequently by debt-led flows following the introduction of quantitative easing in the United States. Both types of inflows are critical for bank-dependent Asia in need of long-term financing for infrastructure development. Yet, these two types of capital flows are also the most volatile. The surge of inflows in the midst of excess savings helped raise liquidity and growth, but also posed serious challenges to financial stability. As revealed by flow-of-funds data, the risk-taking behavior of economic agents and their preferences toward financial assets increased. Bank-led flows increased noncore liabilities and caused a credit boom, elevating the risk of procyclicality, while debt-led flows raised the vulnerability to a reversal of flows. These inflows also lowered the effectiveness of monetary policy, underscoring the need to supplement standard measures with a more effective macroprudential policy.

Increased integration with the global capital markets in recent years has forced India to negotiate the trilemma, balancing the objectives of monetary independence, exchange rate stability, and orderly capital flows. India’s calibrated approach towards liberalization of capital account, wherein certain flows and agents were accorded priority in the liberalization process, has helped India to deal with the trilemma.

In this paper, we examine India’s experience in negotiating the trilemma during the last three decades. In doing so, we deviate from the existing literature by quantifying the various policy objectives under the trilemma. This allows us to analyze the extent to which pursuit of an objective has entailed giving up two other objectives.

Using empirical methods, we find that India has been constrained by the trilemma during the last three decades. However, instead of adopting corner solutions, India has juggled the various policy objectives under the trilemma as per the demands of the macroeconomic situation. The overall policy architecture encompassed active management of capital flows, especially volatile flows and debt flows, a moderately flexible exchange rate regime with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) intervening at times to prevent excessive volatility, sterilization of these interventions through multiple instruments, and building up of a stockpile of reserves. This intermediate approach has suited India well as it has been able to maintain a healthy growth rate, targeted monetary and credit growth rates, a moderate inflation rate through most of the period, and a sustainable current account deficit.

Empirical literature suggests that while there is low but improving risk sharing in developed countries, risk sharing in the developing countries is low and has remained low. We confirm this observation using panel data for the period 1986–2011. Overall we find weak evidence that an increase in capital account liberalization reduces the dependence of idiosyncratic consumption on idiosyncratic gross domestic product (GDP) in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). An interaction of capital account liberalization proxy with capital flows produces a mixed effect on consumption risk sharing, calling for caution in capital account liberalization policy design. On the other hand, while we find no evidence that financial integration, as measured by cross-border capital flows in terms of the ratio of foreign assets to GDP, is helpful in consumption risk sharing in SSA, equity appears to hold the potential of precipitating a reduction in consumption risk while foreign direct investment (FDI) and debt are particularly noticeable to have a facilitative role in unhinging idiosyncratic consumption from idiosyncratic output in East African Community (EAC) and Southern African Development Cooperation (SADC) regional groupings, respectively. FDI liabilities in particular elicit a significantly positive enhancement of risk sharing in EAC and are economically meaningful in SADC. The impact of individual assets and liabilities is overall mixed, both in SSA and regional groupings, pointing to an underdeveloped capital markets scenario in need of urgent attention in terms of well-planned policies and strategies directed towards developing competitive capital markets in Africa for purposes of risk sharing.