Category Archives: Capital Flows

Dealing with the Fallout from U.S. Policies

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The divergence of monetary policies in the advanced economies continues to roil financial markets. The Federal Reserve has reacted to better labor market conditions by ending its quantitative easing policy. The Bank of Japan, on the other hand, will expand its purchases of securities, and the European Central Bank has indicated its willingness to undertake unconventional policies if inflation expectations do not rise. The differences in the prospects between the U.S. and Great Britain on the one hand and the Eurozone and Japan on the other has caused Nouriel Roubini to liken the global economy to a jetliner with only one engine still functioning.

The effect of U.S. interest rates on international capital flows is well-documented. Many countries are vulnerable to changes in U.S. policies that can reverse financial flows. Countries that have relied on capital flows searching for a higher yield to finance their current account deficits are particularly susceptible. Declining commodity prices reinforce the exposure of commodity exporters such as Brazil and Russia.

U.S. markets affect capital flows in other ways. Erlend Nier, Tahsin Saadi Sedik and Tomas Molino of the IMF have investigated the key drivers of private capital flows in a sample of emerging market economies during the last decade. They found that changes in economic volatility, as measured by the VIX (the Chicago Board Options Exchange Market Volatility Index, which measures the implied volatility of S&P 500 index options), are the “dominant driver of capital flows to emerging markets” during periods of global financial stress. During such periods, the influence of fundamental factors, such as growth differentials, diminishes. Countries can defend themselves with higher interest rates, but at the cost of slowing their domestic economies.

When the IMF’s economists included data from advanced economies in their empirical analysis, they found that the impact of the VIX was higher in those economies. They inferred that as countries develop financially, “capital flows could therefore be increasingly influenced by external factors.” Financial integration, therefore, will lead to more vulnerability to the VIX.

Volatility in U.S. equity markets drives up the VIX. Moreover, empirical analyses, such as one by Corradi, Distaso and Mele, find that U.S. variables, such as the Industrial Production Index and the Consumer Price Index, explain part of the changes in the VIX. U.S. economic conditions, therefore, affect global capital flows through more linkages than interest rates alone.

What are the implications for U.S. policymakers? The Federal Open Market Committee does not usually consider the impact of its policy directives on foreign economies. On the other hand, the Fed is well aware of the feedback from foreign economies to the U.S. Moreover, there are measures the U.S. could undertake to lessen the impact of its policy shifts on foreign markets.

During the global financial crisis, for example, the Federal Reserve established swap arrangements for 14 foreign central banks, including those of Brazil, Mexico, Singapore and South Korea. These gave the foreign financial regulators the ability to lend dollars to their banks that had financed holdings of U.S. assets by borrowing in the U.S. However, not all emerging markets’ central banks were deemed eligible for this financial relationship, leaving some of them disappointed (see Prasad, Chapter 11).

Federal Reserve officials have signaled that they are not interested in serving again as a source of liquidity. One alternative would be to allow the IMF to take over this capacity. But the U.S. Congress has not passed the legislation needed to implement long-overdue governance reforms at the Fund, and it is doubtful that the results of the recent elections will lead to a different stance. Not many foreign countries will be in favor of enabling the IMF to undertake new obligations until the restructuring of that institution’s governance is resolved.

Volatile capital flows have the potential of sabotaging already-anemic recoveries in many emerging market countries. The global financial architecture continues to lack reliable backstops in the event of more instability. The U.S. should cooperate with other nations and international financial institutions in addressing the fallout from its economic policies, either by directly providing liquidity or allowing the international institutions to do so.

Volatility in the Emerging Markets

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Volatility has returned to the financial markets. Stock prices in the U.S. have fallen from their September highs, and the return on 10-year Treasury bonds briefly fell below 2%.  Financial markets in emerging markets have been particularly hard hit. The Institute for International Finance estimates that $9 billion was withdrawn from equity markets in those countries in October, while the issuance of new bonds fell.

The increased volatility follows a period of rising allocations of portfolio investments by advanced economies to assets in the emerging market economies. The IMF’s latest Global Financial Stability Report reported that equity market allocations increased from 7% of the total stock of advanced economy portfolio investments in 2002 to almost 10% in 2012, which represented $2.4 trillion of emerging market equities. Similarly, bond allocations rose from 4% to almost 10% during the same period, reaching $1.6 trillion of emerging market bonds.

The outflows are due to several factors. The first, according to the IMF, is a decline in growth rates in these countries below their pre-crisis rates. While part of the slowdown reflects global conditions, there are also concerns about slowing productivity increases. China’s performance is one of the reasons for the lower forecast. Its GDP rose at a rate of 7.3% in the third quarter, below the 7.5% that the government wants to achieve.

Second, the prospect of higher interest rates in the U.S. following the winding down of the Federal Reserve’s Quantitative Easing has caused investors to reassess their asset allocations. The importance of “push” factors versus “pull” factors in driving capital flows has long been recognized, but their relative importance may have grown in recent years.   A recent paper by Shaghil Ahmed and Andrei Zlate (working paper here) provides evidence that the post-crisis response in net capital inflows, particularly portfolio flows, in a sample of emerging markets to the difference between domestic and U.S. monetary policy rates increased in the post-crisis period (2009:Q3 – 2013:Q2). They also looked at the impact of the U.S. large-scale asset purchases, and found that the such purchases had a statistically significant impact on gross capital inflows to these countries.

Part of the increased response in flows between advanced and emerging market economies may reflect the actions of large asset managers. In a paper in the latest BIS Quarterly Review, Ken Miyajima and Ilhyock Shim investigate the response of asset managers in advanced economies to benchmarks of emerging market portfolios. They point out that these managers often rely on performance measures of asset markets in emerging markets, which leads to an increased correlation of the assets under the managers’ control. Moreover, relatively small shifts in portfolio allocation by the asset managers can have a significant impact on asset markets in emerging markets. As a result, in recent years “…investor flows to asset managers and EME asset prices reinforced each other’s directional movements.” Investor flows to the emerging market economies are procyclical. If other factors do not provide a reason to reverse the outflows, they will continue.

The IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report also points out that: “An unintended consequence of…stronger financial links between advanced and emerging market economies is the increased synchronization of asset price movements and volatility.” One downside of increased financial globalization, therefore, is a decline in the ability to lower risk through geographic diversification. Similarly, any notion of “decoupling” emerging markets from the advanced economies is a “mirage,” according to Mexico’s central bank head Agustin Carstens. To achieve international financial stability will require monitoring capital flows across asset markets in different countries; volatility does not respect geographic borders.

The Challenges of Achieving Financial Stability

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The end of the dot.com bubble in 2000 led to a debate over whether central banks should take financial stability into account when formulating policy, in addition to the usual indicators of economic stability such as inflation and unemployment. The response from many central bankers was that they did not feel confident that they could identify price bubbles before they collapsed, but that they could always deal with the byproducts of a bout of speculation. The global financial crisis undercut that response and has led to the development of macroprudential tools to address systemic vulnerabilities. But regulators and other policymakers who seek to achieve financial stability face several challenges.

First, they have to distinguish between the signals given by financial and economic indicators, and weigh the impact of any measures they consider on anemic economic recoveries. The yields in Europe on sovereign debt for borrowers such as Spain, Portugal and Ireland are at their lowest levels since before the crisis. Foreign investors are scooping up properties in Spain, where housing prices have fallen by over 30% since their 2007 highs. But economic growth in the Eurozone for the first quarter was 0.2% and in the European Union 0.3%. Stock prices in the U.S. reached record levels while Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen voiced concerns about a weak labor market and inflation below the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. When asked about the stock market, Yellen admitted that investors may be taking on extra risk because of low interest rates, but said that equity market valuations were within their “historical norms.” Meanwhile, Chinese officials seek to contain the impact of a deflating housing bubble on their financial system while minimizing any economic consequences.

Second, regulators need to consider the international dimensions of financial vulnerability. Capital flows can increase financial fragility, and the rapid transmission of financial volatility across borders has been recognized since the 1990s. Graciela L. Kaminsky, Carmen M. Reinhart and Carlos A. Végh analyzed the factors that led to what they called “fast and furious” contagion. Such contagion occurred, they found, when there had been previous surges of capital inflows and when the crisis was unanticipated. The presence of common creditors, such as international banks, was a third factor. U.S. banks had been involved in Latin America before the debt crisis of the 1980s, while European and Japanese banks had lent to Asia in the 1990s before the East Asian crisis.

The global financial crisis revealed that financial integration across borders exacerbated the downturn.  The rise of international financial networks that transmit risk across frontiers was the subject of a recent IMF conference. Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University gave the opening talk on interconnectedness and financial stability, and claimed that banks can be not only too big to fail, and can also be “too interconnected, too central, and too correlated to fail.” But dealing with interconnected financial networks is difficult for policymakers whose authority ends at their national borders.

Finally, officials have to overcome the opposition of those who are profiting from the current environment. IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde has attributed insufficient progress on banking reform to “fierce industry pushback” from that sector. Similarly, Bank of England head Mark Carney has told bankers that they must develop a sense of their responsibilities to society. Adam J. Levitin, in a Harvard Law Review essay that summarizes the contents of several recent books on the financial crisis, writes that “regulatory capture” by financial institutions has undercut financial regulation that was supposed to restrain them, and requires a political response. James Kwak has emphasized the role of ideology in slowing financial reform.

Markets for financial and other assets exhibit little sign of stress. The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility index (VIX), which measures expectations of U.S. stock price swings, fell to a 14-month low that matched pre-crisis levels. Such placidity, however, can mask the buildup of systemic stresses in financial systems. Regulators and other policy officials who seek to forestall another crisis by acting peremptorily will need to possess political courage as well as economic insight.

Capital Liberalization and Inequality

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Inequality, which has drawn a great deal of comment and analysis following the publication of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, has sometimes been seen as a byproduct to increased international trade. But now other international economic linkages are being investigated. The International Monetary Fund’s Managing Director, Christine Lagarde, has acknowledged the need to take distributional consequences into consideration when designing IMF policy programs. Moreover, Fund economists have contributed to the research on the linkages between financial globalization and inequality.

Davide Furceri and Prakash Loungani of the IMF have investigated the effect of capital account liberalization on inequality. They looked at 58 episodes of capital account reform in 17 advanced economies, and found that the Gini coefficient (a measure of inequality) increased by about 1% a year after liberalization and by 2% after five years. One channel of transmission from the capital account to inequality could be the Increased borrowing by domestic firms that allows them to hire skilled workers, who pull ahead of the less-skilled workers.

A similar impact was found by Florence Jaumotte, Subir Lall and Chris Papageorgiou, also of the IMF. They analyzed the effect of financial globalization and trade as well as technology on income inequality in 51 countries over the period of 1981 to 2003. They reported that technology played a larger role in increasing inequality than globalization. But while trade actually reduced inequality through increased exports of agricultural goods from developing countries, foreign direct investment played a different role. Inward FDI (like technology) favored workers with relatively higher skills and education, while outward FDI reduced employment in lower skill sectors. Consequently, the authors concluded, while financial deepening has been associated with higher growth, a disproportionate share of the gains may go to those who already have higher incomes.

Jayati Ghosh of Jawaharlal Nehru University of New Delhi has examined the role of capital inflows in developing countries. She maintains that the inflows appreciate the real exchange rate and encourage investment in non-tradable sectors and domestic asset markets. The resulting rise in asset prices pulls funds away from the financing of agriculture and small firms, hurting farmers and workers in traditional sectors. Eventually, the asset bubbles break, and the poor are usually those most vulnerable to the ensuing crisis.

After the Asian crisis of 2007-08, Barry Eichengreen of UC-Berkeley analyzed some of the other linkages that could tie inequality to capital account liberalization. He dismissed claims that capital mobility hinders the ability of governments to maintain social safety nets or to use macroeconomic policy to stabilize output. He agreed that developing countries were more likely to suffer the negative effects of capital mobility. But the problem lay in the combination of an open capital account and inadequate institutions and regulations.

The global financial crisis demonstrated that weak regulation and volatility in financial flows are not unique to emerging markets and developing countries. Moreover, while the U.S. economy now shows signs of increased growth, the long-term unemployed are not sharing in the recovery.  The U.S. Senate has passed a bill that would extend benefits to this group of workers, but it faces opposition in the House of Representatives. On the other hand, those households that own substantial financial assets have benefited greatly from the increase in their value since 2009, which is due in large part to monetary policy. Similar patterns can be found in Europe.

Those most hurt by the outcome of financial instability should be the first to benefit from government policies intended to mitigate its impact. But we know that politicians are much more responsive to their more affluent constituents, who hold financial assets. The uneven recoveries that follow financial crises injure those least capable of dealing with misfortune, thus exacerbating the disparity between those at the top of the income distribution and those at the bottom.

Riding the Waves

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The volatility in emerging markets has abated a bit, but may resume in the fallout of the Russian takeover of the Crimea. The capital outflows and currency depreciations experienced in some emerging market nations have been attributed to their choice of policies. But their economic situations reflect the domestic impact of capital inflows as well as their macroeconomic policies.

 Fernanda Nechio of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, for example, shows that exchange rate depreciations of emerging markets are linked to their fiscal and current account balances, with larger depreciations occurring in those countries such as Brazil and India with deficits in both balances. Kristin Forbes of MIT’s Sloan School also draws attention to the connection between the extent of the currency depreciations and the corresponding current account deficits. Nechio and Forbes both advise policymakers in emerging markets to make sound policy choices to avoid further volatility.

Good advice! But Stijn Claessens of the IMF and Swati Ghosh of the World Bank have pointed out in the World Bank’s Dealing with the Challenges of Macro Financial Linkages in Emerging Markets that capital flows can exacerbate prevailing economic trends. Relatively large capital inflows to emerging markets (“surges”) tend to take the form of bank and portfolio debt, which contribute to increased domestic bank lending and domestic credit. Claessens and Ghosh write (p.108) that “…large inflows in net terms are the financial counterpart to the savings and investment decisions in the country and affect the exchange rate, inflation, and current account positions.” They also endanger the stability of the financial system as bank balance sheets expand and lending standards deteriorate. These financial flows contribute to increases in asset prices and further credit extension until some domestic or foreign shock leads to an economic and financial downturn.

Are the authorities helpless to do anything? Claessens and Ghosh list policies that may reduce macro vulnerability, which include exchange rate appreciation, monetary and fiscal policy tightening, and the use of capital controls. They also mention, as do the authors of the other chapters of the World Bank volume, the use of macro prudential policies (MaPPs) aimed at financial institutions and borrowers. But they admit that the evidence on the effectiveness of the MaPPs is limited.

Moreover, the macroeconomic policies they enumerate may not be sufficient to deal with the impact of capital inflows. Tightening monetary policy can draw more foreign capital. Fiscal policy is not a nimble policy lever, and usually operates with a lag

What about the use of flexible exchange rates as a buffer against foreign shocks? Emerging market policymakers have been reluctant to fully embrace flexible rates. More importantly, as pointed out here, it is not clear that flexible rates provide the protection that the theory of the “trilemma” suggests it does. Hélène Rey of the London Business School claimed last summer that there fluctuating exchange rates cannot insulate economics from global financial cycles in capital flows and credit growth. Macroprudential measures such as higher leverage ratios are needed, and the use of capital controls should be considered.

Last week we learned that capital flows to developing countries fell in February, with syndicated bank lending falling to its lowest level since 2005. This was followed by the news that domestic credit growth is falling in many emerging markets, including Brazil and Indonesia. The ensuing changes in fundamentals in these countries may or may not alleviate further depreciation pressures. But they will reflect the procyclical linkage of capital flows and domestic credit growth as much as wise policy choices. And there is no guarantee that the reversals will not overshoot and bring about a new set of troubles. The waves of capital can be as tricky to ride as are ocean waves.

Affairs, Domestic and Foreign

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Raghuram Rajan, ex- faculty member of the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, ex-head of the research department of the IMF, and currently Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (its central bank), set off a storm of comment when he warned of a breakdown in the global coordination of monetary policy. Frustrated by the decline in the foreign exchange value of the rupee that followed the cutback in asset purchases by the Federal Reserve, Rajan claimed that the Federal Reserve was ignoring the impact of its policies on the rest of the world.  Does he have a valid cause for concern?

Quite a few folks have weighed in on this matter: see here, here, here, here, here and here. Rodrik and Subramanian make several interesting points. First, the Federal Reserve was criticized when it lowered rates, so complaints that it is now raising them are a bit hypocritical (but see here). Second, blaming the Fed for not being a team player as the emerging markets were when they lowered their rates in 2008-09 is not a valid comparison. The emerging markets lowered their rates then because it was in their interest to do so, not out of any sense of international solidarity. Third, their governments allowed short-term capital inflows to enter their economies; did they not realize that the day could come when these flows would reverse? Finally, their policymakers allowed the inflows to contribute to credit bubbles that resulted in inflation and current account deficits, which are significant drivers of the volatility.

Moreover, the Federal Reserve is constrained by law to promote maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates in the U.S., not the global community But couldn’t turmoil in the emerging markets threaten U.S. conditions? Robin Harding at the Financial Times thinks this is an unlikely scenario. He points to two channels of transmission between the U.S. and the countries that have shown the most turbulence: exports and financial markets. The emerging market nations that have witnessed the most volatility account for very small proportions of U.S. exports. (China, on the other hand, does claim 7.5% of our exports, but so far has not suffered any signs of distress (but see here).) In addition, financial flows might be affected, but to date these have resulted in lower interest rates in the U.S. due to a flight to safety. Previous shocks from the emerging markets pushed U.S. stock prices down, but these effects were short-lived. Therefore, Harding claims, “…it would have to become much more of a crisis…” to endanger the U.S. economy.

The problem with this assessment is that it assumes that we know the extent of our financial vulnerability to a decline in the fortunes of these economies. But one lesson of the 2007-09 global financial crisis is that there may be much we do not know about our financial structure. U.S.-based institutions can be vulnerable to shocks in ways that we do not recognize. Subprime mortgages were not themselves that significant a share of the liabilities of U.S. banks and shadow banks, but they were the foundation of a range of derivatives, etc., that took down the financial markets when these mortgages became toxic.

The threat of more declines in foreign asset prices does not mean that the Federal Reserve should retreat from its current policies. A situation with some interesting similarities took place in the early 1980s. U.S. banks, awash with recycled oil revenues, had lent extensively to countries in Latin America and elsewhere in the 1970s.  A debt crisis ensued after Paul Volcker and the Federal Reserve raised interest rates (see Chapter 4). Volcker recently reflected on these events in an interview with Martin Feldstein in the fall 2013 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives:

“What were you going to do? Were you going to conduct an easy-money policy and go back on all the policy you’d undertaken to try to save Mexico, which wouldn’t have saved Mexico anyway? We did save Mexico, but by other means.”

U.S. policymakers have always claimed (with some justification) that a healthy U.S. economy is the best remedy for a troubled world economy, and monetary officials will no doubt proceed as they think best. But we should take a look around before we proceed. The February ice underneath our feet may be a bit thinner than we realize.

Desperate Times, Desperate Measures

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The selloff of emerging market currencies and equities continued last week. A Bank of America report noted that investors withdrew $6.4 billion last week from emerging market stock funds, while bond investors are also showing signs of retreating. Moreover, the declines in currency values have expanded outside the “Fragile Five” of Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Africa and Turkey to include Argentina and Russia. What can policymakers do to offset the declines?

Kristin J. Forbes and Michael W. Klein have examined the policy options available to governments that face crises due to contracting capital flows and their impact on GDP growth, inflation and unemployment. The measures include a rise in interest rates, currency depreciation, the sale of foreign exchange reserves and new controls on capital outflows. They report that currency depreciations and reserve sales will provide support for GDP growth, while increases in interest rates and or imposing capital controls do not. But the beneficial impacts of the first two sets of policies appear with a lag and may generate higher inflation. None of the measures improve unemployment.

Christian Saborowski, Sarah Sanya, Hans Weisfeld and Juan Yepez of the IMF also looked at the effectiveness of capital outflow restrictions. They report that controls on outflows can be effective in reducing net outflows only when countries have good macroeconomic fundamentals, as measured by their records of GDP growth, inflation, fiscal policy and their current account balances, or good institutions. Iceland’s use of controls in 2008 is cited as a recent example of a successful use of controls. Of course, an economy with strong macroeconomic conditions is less likely to face substantial outflows.

We can use the indicators used in the IMF study to assess macroeconomic conditions in the countries in the headlines last week. The data are from 2013:

GDP Growth Inflation Fiscal Budget/GDP Current Acct/GDP
Argentina 5.1% ? -3.3% -0.6%
Brazil 2.2% 6.2% -2.7% -3.7%
India 4.9% 10.1% -5.1% -3.1%
Indonesia 5.6% 7.0% -3.3% -3.9%
Russia 1.5% 6.8% -0.5% +2.3%
South Africa 1.9% 5.8% -4.8% -6.5%
Turkey 3.9% 7.5% -1.2% -7.5%

All the countries had rising inflation rates, with India’s hitting double digits. The current account deficits were particularly high for South Africa and Turkey, while India and South Africa had fiscal deficits of about 5%.  Russia’s growth rate was the lowest in this group.

And then there is Argentina. No one believes the inflation rate that the government reports; unofficial estimates place it at around 28%. The government has sought to restrict capital flows while also pegging the exchange rate. But foreign exchange market intervention by the central bank has not stopped an unofficial market from springing up. Last week the central bank, which saw its foreign exchange reserves shrinking precipitously, stepped back and allowed the peso to fall by more than 15%. The government also enacted a partial liberalization of the controls on the purchase of foreign exchange. But there are no signs of a response to inflation, and President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who faces a term limit, has little incentive to take measures that in the short-term could further anger Argentine citizens.

Turkey’s central bank also acknowledged the strength of the forces arrayed against it when it announced a sharp rise in interest rates.  But foreign investors are concerned about corruption and political instability, and the Turkish currency has continued to slump. The Prime Minister’s opposition to the higher interest rates was not reassuring.

When will the withdrawals of money from the emerging markets end, and how will all this play out? The governments of the affected countries are using combinations of all the measures that Forbes and Klein list. But the most diligent central bank can not neutralize the impact of a weak or conflicted government. The financial volatility will continue until some sort of resolution is found to the political volatility.

Time For a Change?

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The imminent (or not) taper of purchases of securities by the Federal Reserve has resulted in a great deal of speculation about its effects on other countries. Among the more intriguing views that have been advanced is the claim that a withdrawal of foreign capital will lead to much-needed reform measures in emerging markets.  This is an interesting assertion, in part because it contradicts the meme that capital inflows act as a catalyst for “collateral benefits” that contribute to the establishment of better institutions. So, which is it—will a reversal of foreign money lead to an improvement in domestic governance or not?

The collateral benefits view was advanced after empirical analyses failed to find evidence that capital account liberalization contributed to economic growth. Then-IMF economists Ayhan Kose, Eswar Prasad, Kenneth Rogoff and Shang-Jin Wei (Prasad is now at Cornell, Rogoff at Harvard and Wei at Columbia) claimed that capital inflows promoted the development of the domestic financial sector, and contributed to institutional development, better governance and macroeconomic discipline. There was an intuitive appeal to this argument: shouldn’t foreign investors favor conditions that facilitate the development of local markets and institutions that lead to profits?

The problem is the (lack of) evidence for this linkage. Indeed, the wreckage of a decade of financial crises in Mexico, East Asia, Russia, Brazil, Turkey and Mexico suggested that foreign lenders had been blind to local conditions. Dani Rodrik and Arvind Subramanian, in their review of the arguments for financial globalization,  were unconvinced that collateral benefits could be found, and pointed to Turkey as a counter-example.

The second perspective builds off this contrasting view that capital inflows serve as a stopgap measure that allows recalcitrant governments to avoid implementing the reforms that domestic lenders demand. Easy money from aboard allows government officials to finance fiscal deficits that may include payments to supporters of the regime. Once the conditions that led to the inflows of foreign money disappear, the government is forced to deal with the domestic creditors.

Another version of this story sees capital inflows as contributing to bubbles in the country’s financial markets and institutions. A reversal of foreign money reveals the fragility of the domestic financial conditions and necessitates reforms. South Korea is sometimes cited as an example of a country that enacted economic and financial reform measures after its 1997-98 crisis that made the country better off.  Of course, a country pays a high price if a capital outflow occurs precipitously.

Recent concerns have centered on the “Fragile Five” of  Brazil, Indonesia, India, Turkey and South Africa. Their currencies depreciated when Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke first raised the issue of cutting back on asset purchases last year. Increasing current account deficits in all but India have revealed a dependence on foreign capital. But it is India that most requires reform of the financial sector. Raghuram Rajan, governor of the country’s central bank, has sought to modernize the financial system, but faces political opposition and inertia. It would be unfortunate if he needed a crisis to get the attention of domestic politicians.

Who’s In Control?

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In the post-financial crisis world, capital controls have become viewed in many quarters as an acceptable policy tool. A number of studies have investigated how controls may affect macroeconomic and financial performance. But how controls are implemented is also a topic of interest, in part because the inopportune use of these measures may exacerbate the conditions they are intended to ameliorate.

Charles Collyns of the Institute of International Finance presents a classification of the use of controls to deal with capital inflows. The first template is the “Classical Chinese”: the capital account is largely closed except for FDI flows, the exchange rate is fixed and there is a repressed domestic financial system.  But China itself is moving away from this method, as are many low-income countries. The second model is the “Textbook” pre-2008 IMF model: flexible exchange rates with the long-run goal of capital account liberalization. This model showed itself vulnerable to financial shocks in 2008. The third scheme is the “Brazilian Defense”: a floating exchange rate and the use of macroprudential and tax tools to restarin capital flows. This approach has also been utilized by India and Turkey. The fourth classification is dubbed by Collyns the “New Orthodoxy,” and is defined by a commitment to both an open capital account and the development of domestic financial markets. Mexico is offered as an example country that uses such an approach.

If the “Classical Chinese” and the “Textbook” models are being discarded, then one popular alternative is the discretionary use of capital controls. But are capital controls used to avoid inflows that lead to credit bubbles and a boom-bust cycle? A new paper by Andrés Fernández, Alessandro Rebucci and Martín Uribe examines whether policymakers use capital controls in a macroprudential manner. If they were, we would expect to see a tightening of controls on inflows and a relaxation of restrictions on outflows during expansions, and the opposite pattern of policy measures during downturns.

The authors use three indicators—the output gap, the cyclical component of the real exchange rate, and the cyclical component of the current account—to date their boom-and-bust episodes. They update Schindler’s index of capital controls, which distinguishes among controls on inflows and outflows on six types of assets. The authors report that over the period of 2005-2011 there was no correspondence of changes in capital controls and macroeconomic conditions. Controls were not responsive to economic expansions or contractions, over- or undervaluations of the real exchange rate or large current account imbalances.

They offer two interpretations for their results. One is that theory has outrun practice, and controls will become increasingly used in a macroprudential fashion as policymakers become accustomed to using them in this fashion. The second interpretation is that there are other factors that determine the cyclical properties of the usage of capital controls. But what?

There was a literature on the political and economic determinants of capital account liberalization in the 1980s and 1990s, summarized by Eichengreen. Among the factors found to contribute to decontrol were the deregulation of domestic financial markets, the abandonment of exchange rate pegs, and a trend towards democratization in many developing countries. But Eichengreen cautioned that there might have been other factors that were difficult to measure but nonetheless significant. The latest contributions to the literature on the use of capital controls indicate that there are still unanswered questions regarding their implementation.

Strategic Retreat or Tactical Pause?

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Several recent analyses of financial globalization offer different perspectives on whether the recent contraction in capital flows represents a cyclical decline or a long-term reversal. On the one hand, the expansion of gross financial flows in the last decade among upper-income countries will not continue at the same pace. But the development of financial markets in emerging markets will increase capital flows within that group of countries as well as draw funds from the advanced economies.

Richard Dobbs and Susan Lund of the McKinsey Global Institute note that cross-border flows are more than 60% below the pre-crisis peak. They attribute the decline to a “dramatic reversal of European financial integration” as European banks curtail their lending activities. They also draw attention to “a retrenchment of global banking” due to a reassessment by banks of their foreign activities in light of new capital requirements and regulations. Dobbs and Lund are concerned that too strong a reversal will result in a segregated global financial system.

Greg Ip of The Economist also writes about a reversal of financial integration for a similar set of reasons. Bankers are shrinking their balance sheets while regulators seek to shield their domestic financial markets from foreign shocks. In addition, Ip draws attention to the renewed interest in the use of capital controls to lower volatility. The IMF now includes controls as a tool that policymakers can use to manage the risks associated with surges of capital flows. But like Dobbs and Lund, Ip is concerned about financial fragmentation, and urges financial regulators to cooperate in order to achieve common standards.

The authors of the World Bank’s Capital for the Future: Saving and Investment in an Interdependent World, on the other hand, draw attention to developing countries and emerging markets as both a source and destination of capital flows. These countries are likely to account for an increasing share of gross capital flows, which will be driven (p. 125)  “…by more rapid economic growth and lower population aging in developing countries than in advanced countries, as well as by developing countries’ relatively greater scope for increasing openness and strengthening financial sector institutions.” They see evidence of this trend prior to the global financial crisis, as the share of gross capital inflows to developing countries rose from 4 percent of the total in 2000 to 11 percent in 2007.

Foreign direct investment accounted for most of these inflows, although bank loans have also increased. While portfolio flows have constituted a relatively small share of inflows to these countries, the authors of Capital for the Future believe that in the future a larger proportion will flow through the capital markets. Ultimately, they claim (p. 131), there will be “developing-country convergence with advanced economies in terms of their composition of their capital inflows.” Policymakers can expedite the transition to more portfolio flows through the development of domestic financial markets and their regulatory structure.

China will play a major role in any increase in capital flows to emerging economies. Foreign exchange reserves have been the traditional form of asset accumulation in that country. Tamim Bayoumi and Franziska Ohnsorge of the IMF use a portfolio allocation model to speculate about the effects of the liberalization of capital regulations by the Chinese authorities on the private sector. They infer from their estimates that (p. 14) “capital account liberalization may be followed by a stock adjustment of Chinese assets abroad on the order of 15-25 percent of GDP and a smaller stock adjustment for foreign assets in China on the order of 2-10 percent of GDP.” The acquisition of foreign stocks and bonds by Chinese investors who would seek to diversify their portfolios could offset any continued increase in FDI inflows. The IMF economists contrast this forecast with one for India, which they believe would have more balanced flows following capital account deregulation because of smaller asset holdings by Indian investors and hence a more restricted scope for diversification.

These scenarios for the future of financial globalization need not contradict each other. On the one hand, bank lending in the U.S. and Europe is likely to be limited as governments enact new regulations and Europe continues to deal with its debt crisis. But investors in those countries may look to the emerging and “frontier” markets for higher returns based on their growth, while increased income in the emerging markets will drive a demand for liquid financial instruments that will spill over into foreign markets. In addition, firms in those countries will look to expand their operations in other developing economies through investments. Financial flows may follow a new course, but will not be contained for long.