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While capital flows to emerging markets bring numerous benefits, they are also known to create macroeconomic imbalances (economic overheating, currency overvaluation) and increase financial vulnerabilities (domestic credit growth, bank leverage, foreign currency-denominated lending). But are all inflows the same? In this paper, we examine whether the source of the inflow - residents repatriating foreign assets or nonresidents investing in the country - or the type of inflow (foreign direct investment, portfolio, other investment, etc.) makes any difference to the consequences of the capital flow. Our results, based on a sample of 53 emerging markets over 1980 - 2013, show that when it comes to the source of the inflow, the macroeconomic and financial stability consequences of flows driven by residents (asset flows) and nonresidents (liability flows) are broadly similar in economic terms. Formal statistical tests, however, suggest that liability flows are more prone to causing economic overheating and domestic credit expansion than asset flows. On the types of inflows, we find that compared to direct investment, portfolio debt and other investment flows are associated with larger macroeconomic imbalances and financial vulnerabilities. We conclude that policy should try to mitigate the untoward consequences of inflows, and shift their composition from risky to safer forms of liabilities.

Este escrito analiza el manejo de las entradas de capital en los mercados emergentes. Revisa las principales herramientas de política, incluidas la política fiscal y monetaria, la política cambiaria, la intervención en el mercado de cambios, la regulación prudencial doméstica y los controles al capital. Una conclusión clave es que si la economía funciona cerca del potencial, el nivel de reservas es adecuado, la tasa de cambio no está subvaluada y es probable que las entradas sean transitorias, el uso de controles al capital –además de la política prudencial y macroeconómica– se justifica como parte del conjunto de herramientas de política para manejar las entradas. La evidencia de la crisis actual sugiere que los controles encaminados a lograr una estructura de obligaciones externas menos riesgosa redujeron la fragilidad financiera y aumentaron la resiliencia ante caídas del crecimiento.

Este escrito analiza el manejo de las entradas de capital en los mercados emergentes. Revisa las principales herramientas de política, incluidas la política fiscal y monetaria, la política cambiaria, la intervención en el mercado de cambios, la regulación prudencial doméstica y los controles al capital. Una conclusión clave es que si la economía funciona cerca del potencial, el nivel de reservas es adecuado, la tasa de cambio no está subvaluada y es probable que las entradas sean transitorias, el uso de controles al capital -además de la política prudencial y macroeconómica- se justifica como parte del conjunto de herramientas de política para manejar las entradas. La evidencia de la crisis actual sugiere que los controles encaminados a lograr una estructura de obligaciones externas menos riesgosa redujeron la fragilidad financiera y aumentaron la resiliencia ante caídas del crecimiento. This paper analyzes the management of surges in capital inflows to Emerging Markets. It reviews the main policy tools, including fiscal and monetary policy, exchange rate policy, foreign exchange market intervention, domestic prudential regulation, and capital controls. A key conclusion is that, if the economy is operating near potential, if the level of reserves is adequate, if the exchange rate is not undervalued, and if the flows are likely to be transitory, then use of capital controls -in addition to both prudential and macroeconomic policy- is justified as part of the policy toolkit to manage inflows. Evidence from the current crisis suggests that controls aimed at achieving a less risky external liability structure reduced financial fragilities and increased growth resilience.

A large body of literature finds that exporters do not pass nominal exchange rate movements fully through to destination market prices over short time horizons. This imperfect passthrough has been widely attributed to strategic “pricing-to-market”, whereby exporters deliberately accept changes in the home currency value of export prices in order to gain or defend market share. We show that imperfect passthrough in the short run may also arise from simple menu costs. In contrast to strategic pricing, however, the long run passthrough is complete under menu costs — with associated implications for trade adjustment. Examining the cover prices of two magazines, The Economist and Business Week, we find support for menu costs as a partial explanation of imperfect passthrough.

This paper investigates whether there was a credit crunch in East Asia during the recent financial and economic crises. Motivated by widespread concern that, over and above any increases in real interest rates, corporates may have also faced credit rationing, we adopt an explicit disequilibrium framework for analyzing the behavior of real credit with a view to assessing whether the supply of, or demand for credit has been a binding constraint. The findings highlight the dynamics associated with a credit crunch. We find evidence of a »credit crunch« in all three crisis countries (Indonesia, Korea, Thailand) in the period immediately following the crisis as the banking system distress deepened, and the supply of (real) credit declined. Thereafter, however, credit demand also fell sharply as economic recession took hold and corporate bankruptcies increased. By the end of the first quarter of 1998, therefore, the constraining factor was the demand for credit. We conclude that, beyond the initial crisis period, there is little evidence of a credit crunch at the aggregate level, although high real interest rates - and credit rationing of individual firms - may have continued to contribute to the difficulties of the corporate sector.

This paper investigates whether there was a credit crunch in East Asia during the recent financial and economic crises. Motivated by widespread concern that, over and above any increases in real interest rates, corporates may have also faced credit rationing, we adopt an explicit disequilibrium framework for analyzing the behavior of real credit with a view to assessing whether the supply of, or demand for credit has been a binding constraint. The findings highlight the dynamics associated with a credit crunch. We find evidence of a »credit crunch« in all three crisis countries (Indonesia, Korea, Thailand) in the period immediately following the crisis as the banking system distress deepened, and the supply of (real) credit declined. Thereafter, however, credit demand also fell sharply as economic recession took hold and corporate bankruptcies increased. By the end of the first quarter of 1998, therefore, the constraining factor was the demand for credit. We conclude that, beyond the initial crisis period, there is little evidence of a credit crunch at the aggregate level, although high real interest rates - and credit rationing of individual firms - may have continued to contribute to the difficulties of the corporate sector.

This paper considers gains from international economic policy coordination when there is uncertainty concerning the functioning of the world economy, but also learning about the "true" model on the part of policymakers. The paper reports estimates of plausible alternative versions of a standard two-country model. Activist policy (either coordinated or uncoordinated) may produce large welfare losses in the absence of learning, if policymakers behave in the wrong model; hence, exogenous money targets and freely flexible exchange rates may be best. However, model learning (from observations on macroeconomic variables) causes coordinated policies to dominate activist uncoordinated policies or exogenous money targets. Copyright 1991 by American Economic Association.