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Foreign investors' changing appetite for risk-taking has been shown to be a key determinant of the global financial cycle. Such fluctuations in risk sentiment also correlate with the dynamics of uncovered interest parity (UIP) premia, capital flows, and exchange rates. To understand how these risk sentiment changes transmit across borders, we propose a two-country macroeconomic framework. Our model features cross-border holdings of risky assets by U.S. financial intermediaries that operate under financial frictions and act as global intermediaries in that they take on foreign asset risk. In this setup, an exogenous increase in U.S.-specific uncertainty, modeled as higher volatility in U.S. assets, leads to higher risk premia in both countries. This occurs because higher uncertainty leads to deleveraging pressure on U.S. intermediaries, triggering higher global risk premia and lower global asset values. Moreover, when U.S. uncertainty rises, the exchange rate in the foreign country vis-a-vis the dollar depreciates, capital flows out of the foreign country, and the UIP premium increases in the foreign country and decreases in the U.S., as in the data.

This paper proposes a theory of foreign reserves as macroprudential policy. We study an open-economy model of financial crises in which pecuniary externalities lead to overborrowing, and show that by accumulating international reserves, the government can achieve the constrained-efficient allocation., Cette étude propose de voir les réserves de change comme un instrument de politique macroprudentielle. Nous étudions un modèle de crises financières en économie ouverte dans lequel les externalités pécuniaires engendrent de l’endettement excessif, et démontrons qu’en accumulant des réserves de change, un gouvernement peut atteindre l’allocation efficace de second rang.

We understand very little about the billions of dollars that flow throughout the world from migrants back to their home countries. In this rigorous and illuminating work, Matt Bakker, an economic sociologist, examines how these migrant remittances - the resources of some of the world's least affluent people - have come to be seen in recent years as a fundamental contributor to development in the migrant-sending states of the global south. This book analyzes how the connection between remittances and development was forged through the concrete political and intellectual practices of policy entrepreneurs within a variety of institutional settings, from national government agencies and international development organizations to nongovernmental policy foundations and think tanks

The existing literature on the role of international capital flows for housing markets can be classified into approaches which focus on the macro relationship between the current account and housing prices on the one hand and studies which specify more specific transmission channels on the other. Building on this literature, we conceptualise the role of international capital flows for housing markets via four central transmission channels. We suggest that by differentiating among these channels, the risk build-up potential of capital flows for housing markets can be evaluated more precisely than in the early literature on global imbalances.

This paper presents a new measure of capital flow pressures in the form of a recast exchange market pressure index. The measure captures pressures that materialize in actual international capital flows as well as pressures that result in exchange rate adjustments. The formulation is theory-based, relying on balance of payments equilibrium conditions and international asset portfolio considerations. Based on the modified exchange market pressure index, the paper also proposes a global risk response index, which reflects the country-specific sensitivity of capital flow pressures to measures of global risk aversion. For a large sample of countries over time, we demonstrate time variation in the effects of global risk on exchange market pressures, the evolving importance of the global factor across types of countries, and the changing risk-on or risk-off status of currencies.

Illicit Financial Flows generated due to the commercial activities of multinational enterprises are quantitatively the most important challenge faced by developing countries in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Current efforts for stemming these illicit flows and reforming the international tax system are however being led by developed countries, with developing country interests poorly reflected in the reform agenda. This research paper highlights the tax issues of great priority for developing countries and how international tax cooperation can contribute to preventing such illicit flows.

The world economy has not still recovered from the effects of the financial crisis that began almost a decade ago first in the US and then in Europe. Policy response to the crisis, the combination of fiscal restraint and ultra-easy monetary policy, has not only failed to bring about a robust recovery but has also aggravated systemic problems in the global economy, notably inequality and chronic demand gap, on the one hand, and financial fragility, on the other. It has generated strong destabilizing spillovers to the Global South. Major emerging economies that were expected a few years ago to become global locomotives have not only lost their momentum, but have also become highly vulnerable to trade and financial shocks. Policies proposed by the new administration in the US could entail a double blow to emerging and developing economies which have become highly dependent on foreign markets, capital and transnational corporations. The EU remains a global deadweight, generating deflationary impulses for the rest of the world economy. The jury is still out on whether the second largest economy, China, will be able to avoid financial turmoil and growth collapse. This state of affairs raises serious policy challenges to the Global South in responding to external shocks and redesigning the pace and pattern of their integration into the global economy so as to benefit from the opportunities that a broader economic space may offer while minimizing the potential risks it may entail.

International commodity prices and capital inflows to developing countries are increasingly synchronized, subjecting commodity-dependent economies to double boom-bust cycles. On the one hand, there are a number of common monetary factors, notably international interest rates and the exchange rate of the dollar that influence commodity prices and capital inflows in the same direction. On the other hand, commodity prices and capital inflows reinforce each other through their influence on economic activity in developing countries. Capital inflows move pro-cyclically with commodity prices, aggravating both positive and negative external trade shocks. This synchronization has greatly heightened the vulnerability of commodity-dependent developing economies to global boom-bust cycles.

The post-crisis period has seen a considerable shift in the composition and drivers of international bank lending and international bond issuance, the two main components of global liquidity. The sensitivity of both types of flows to U.S. monetary policy rose substantially in the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis, peaked around the time of the 2013 Federal Reserve "taper tantrum," and then partially reverted toward pre-crisis levels. Conversely, the responsiveness of international bank lending to global risk conditions declined considerably after the crisis and became similar to that of international debt securities. The increased sensitivity of international bank flows to U.S. monetary policy has been driven mainly by post-crisis changes in the behavior of national banking systems, especially those that ex ante had banks that were less well capitalized. By contrast, the post-crisis fall in the sensitivity of international bank lending to global risk was mainly owing to a compositional effect, driven by increases in the lending market shares of national banking systems that were better capitalized. The post-2013 reversal in the sensitivities to U.S. monetary policy partially reflects the expected divergence in the monetary policies of the United States and other advanced economies, highlighting the sensitivity of capital flows to the degree of commonality of cycles and the stance of policy. Moreover, global liquidity fluctuations have largely been driven by policy initiatives in creditor countries. Policies and prudential instruments that reinforced lending banks' capitalization and stable funding levels reduced the volatility of international lending flows.

What is the role of supply and demand forces in determining movements in international banking flows? Answering this question is crucial for understanding the international transmission of financial shocks and formulating policy. This paper addresses the question by using the method developed in Amiti and Weinstein (forthcoming) to exactly decompose the growth in international bank credit into common shocks, idiosyncratic supply shocks, and idiosyncratic demand shocks for the 2000-16 period. A striking feature of the global banking flows data can be characterized by what we term the "Anna Karenina Principle": all healthy credit relationships are alike, but each unhealthy credit relationship is unhealthy in its own way. During non-crisis years, bank flows are well explained by a common global factor and a local demand factor. But during times of crisis flows are affected by idiosyncratic supply shocks to a borrower country's creditor banks. This has important implications for why standard models break down during crises.

Die deutsch-russischen Wirtschaftsbeziehungen haben sich seit den 1990er Jahren fast unbemerkt von der (medialen) Öffentlichkeit positiv weiterentwickelt. Russland wurde zwar als G8-Mitglied und eines der wichtigen Schwellenländer der BRIC-Gruppe wahrgenommen, mehr Aufmerksamkeit genoss allerdings China. Die Bedeutung Russlands für die deutsche Wirtschaft ist - abgesehen vom Erdgasimport und dem damit untrennbar verbundenen Staatsunternehmen Gazprom - dagegen im Verborgenen geblieben. In view of the Russian annexation of Crimea and its ongoing efforts to destabilise Ukraine, political decision-makers in the EU and the US are considering economic sanctions against Russia. The article analyses whether the German economy would be affected by restrictions on trade and investment relations. As a result, German exporters would suffer from restrictions on business relations with Russia, but they would be able to compensate for possible losses. Russian gas export interruptions, however, would be a more severe problem. Due to Russia's dependence on revenues from the export of natural resources as well as on technology imports from Western countries, the Russian economy would be hit particularly hard.

Cross-border banking and foreign affiliates came to dominate the financial systems of many countries in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa in the 1990s. Yet, the regulatory reform agenda, set by countries with limited exposure to foreign banks at home, has largely neglected the needs of host jurisdictions. Thus, host regulators with foreign-dominated banking systems find themselves with a de facto lack of control over their financial systems while being at the same time largely shut out from key international decision-making forums. This presents host regulators with a dilemma between undertaking potentially costly national policies in a global financial system or relying on cooperative solutions by forums in which they have little voice. This paper develops how this situation differs from the well-known "regulator's dilemma" in IPE and how it shapes the demand for cooperation by host states under conditions of asymmetric interdependence. It then illustrates the "host's dilemma" experienced by emerging European states between 2004 and 2007 before highlighting the surprisingly effective response of international institutions once the crisis hit the region in 2008. Based on this, it suggests three conditions under which international institutions might successfully mitigate the host's dilemma: low politicization, high ideational consensus, and high implementation capacity.

This article shows that global financial markets cannot, by themselves, achieve net transfers of financial capital and real interest rate equalisation across countries and that the integration of both global financial markets and global goods markets is needed to achieve net transfers of capital and real interest rate equalisation across countries. Thus, frictions (barriers to mobility) in one or both of these markets can impede the net transfer of capital between countries, produce the Feldstein and Horioka (1980) finding of high saving-investment correlations, and prevent real interest rates from being equalised across countries. Moreover, frictions in global goods markets can explain why real exchange rates deviate from PPP (purchasing power parity) for extended periods of time and can therefore also explain the PPP puzzle. Thus, we are able to resolve 2 of Obstfeld and Rogoff's (2000) "6 major puzzles in macroeconomics" with essentially the same explanation.

This paper shows that global capital markets cannot, by themselves, achieve net transfers of financial capital between countries and that both the integration of global financial markets as well as the integration of global goods markets are needed to achieve net transfers of capital between countries. Frictions (barriers to mobility) in one or both of these markets can impede net transfers of capital between countries, produce the Feldstein and Horioka (1980) results, and prevent real interest rates from being equalized across countries. Moreover, there is empirical evidence that barriers to the mobility of goods and services are an important obstacle to international capital mobility.

Academic thinking on foreign direct investment has evolved over the years. This paper reviews this evolution for its usefulness in understanding EU-Chinese investment relations today. It then explores the idea of a new dynamic policy regime as a more appropriate means to address the complex issues of investment liberalisation rather than the traditional trade liberalisation approach.

Die Finanzströme von organisierter Kriminalität und Terrorismus sind in dieser Arbeit dargestellt. Zunächst wird ein Versuch unternommen, den Umsatz der organisierten Kriminalität in 20 OECD-Ländern zu schätzen. Das Ausmaß an finanziellen kriminellen Aktivitäten (Umsätzen) dieser 20 Länder betrug 1995 270 Milliarden Dollar und stieg im Jahr 2006 auf 614 Milliarden Dollar an. Weiterhin erfolgt eine kurze Literaturübersicht über die vorhandenen Ziffern zum weltweiten finanziellen Ausmaß der Aktivitäten der organisierten Kriminalität. Ebenso werden Finanzströme islamistischer Terrororganisationen untersucht und die Auswirkungen von Terrorakten auf die Wirtschaft in hoch entwickelten OECD-Ländern. After providing a short literature review and some empirical evidence about the turnover of organized crime, the paper tries a quantification of the turnover of organized crime with the help of a MIMIC estimation procedure for the years 1995 to 2006 for 20 highly developed OECD countries. The volume of turnover from organized crime was 270 billion US-Dollar in the year 1995 and increased to 614 billion US-Dollar in 2006 for these 20 OECD countries. Additionally, a first attempt is made to estimate the financial means of terror organizations (mostly islamistic). The figure shows that Al Qaida and other terror organizations have sufficient financial means. Also, some remarks are made about the effects of terror on the economy.

In Deutschland leben etwa sieben Millionen Ausländerinnen und Ausländer. Weitere hier lebende Personen, die bei Geburt eine andere als die deutsche Staatsangehörigkeit besessen haben, sind Eingebürgerte und (Spät-)Aussiedler. Auf der Basis der Daten des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP) untersucht die vorliegende Studie die Beweggründe dieser Personengruppen, Überweisungen ins Heimatland zu tätigen. Es zeigt sich: Die in Deutschland lebenden Ausländer sowie die Gruppe der Eingebürgerten und (Spät-) Aussiedler sind in Bezug auf ihr Transferverhalten keine homogene Einheit. Während beispielsweise bei Ausländern die Sorge über Ausländerfeindlichkeit und Fremdenhass die Wahrscheinlichkeit Überweisungen in Heimatland zu tätigen und auch die Höhe dieser Zahlungen steigen lässt, ist ein solcher Effekt bei der Gruppe der Eingebürgerten und (Spät-)Aussiedler nicht festzustellen. Auch spielen Erwerbs- und Haushaltseinkommen für die Höhe der Zahlungen nur bei Ausländern eine Rolle. Zudem unterscheidet sich das Überweisungsverhalten dieser Gruppe in Abhängigkeit vom Heimatland.

El inicio del nuevo siglo significó un sustancial aumento de los flujos de capitales desde Estados Unidos (USA) y área dólar hacia las economías emergentes, los países miembros de la Unión Europea (EU) y el mercado de commodities. La fuerte caída de la tasa de interés de referencia de la Reserva Federal y su acompañamiento por parte del Banco Central Europeo determinaron una caída en los rendimientos relativos de los bonos, generando un boom en los precios de las commodities, una caída en el costo de endeudamiento y una consistente revaluación de las respectivas monedas emergentes. El aumento del precio de las commodities determinó un aumento en valor y cantidad de las exportaciones de aquellos países productores de materias primas, la disminución del costo de endeudamiento y una tendencia a la revaluación de las monedas emergentes. Las fuertes expectativas de que la Reserva Federal de por finalizado el ciclo de tasas de interés bajas podría implicar una reversión en el flujo de capitales, dando por finalizado un período único e irrepetible de oportunidades para las economías emergentes. En este sentido es que de confirmarse la reversión en el flujo de capitales, las regiones en cuestión verán aumentados sus costos de endeudamiento, sus monedas devaluadas y una mejora en el saldo de sus cuentas corrientes con una disminución en sus saldos exportables por un deterioro de los precios internacionales.

This book demonstrates how several emerging market and developing countries (EMDs) managed to reregulate cross-border financial flows in the wake of the global financial crisis, despite the political and economic difficulty of doing so at the national level. It also shows that some EMDs, particularly the BRICS coalition, were able to maintain or expand their sovereignty to regulate cross-border finance under global economic governance institutions.

What are the dynamic consequences of comprehensive integration shocks? The answer to this question appears all but trivial. We set up a dynamic macroeconomic model of a small open economy where both capital and labor are mobile and there are increasing returns to scale at the aggregate level. The model features multiple equilibria as well as (local and global) indeterminacy. Hence, expectations matter for resulting equilibrium dynamics. Despite its simplicity, the model creates a rich set of plausible implications. Our analysis contributes to a better understanding of the interaction between expectations and fundamentals in models with indeterminacy. The model is applied to replicate two striking empirical characteristics of macroeconomic development in East Germany since 1991.

Global factors are becoming increasingly important as a cause of international capital fl ows. It is nearly impossible for some countries to protect themselves from outside infl uences on their fi nancial markets. This paper investigates the extent to which various global factors such as stock market volatility, international liquidity and global interest rate levels impact on the effective fi nancial market exchange rates of selected emerging market economies. These results are compared with effects on the fi nancial market exchange rates of the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany.

This volume was prepared by Sebastian Benz while he was working at the Ifo Institute. It was completed in December 2013 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It includes five self-contained chapters. All chapters discuss different implications of the growing importance of trade in intermediate inputs. The first chapter compares the impact of international trade in intermediate inputs (offshoring) on wage inequality in two distinct but similar frameworks. In the first framework the profitability of offshoring is based on increasing returns to scale on the task-level, whereas the second framework relies on differences in relative factor endowments of the two countries involved in offshoring. The second chapter provides a theory of offshoring under imitation risk that explains optimal dynamic adjustments of firms' offshoring decisions and yields two new channels by which offshoring affects wage inequality. Chapter 3 studies the impact of intellectual property rights and of offshoring costs on the rate of innovation and on the offshoring intensity. In chapter 4 I estimate knowledge spillovers through outsourcing relationships between German firms, measured by the number of those firms' successful patent applications. The last chapter describes sector-level input-output relationships in eleven European economies and estimates the importance of international trade in intermediate inputs and internationally mobile capital for the interdependence of output shocks in those countries.

This paper studies the impact of international capital flows on asset prices through risk premia. We investigate whether foreign purchases of U.S. Treasury securities significantly contributed to the decline in excess returns on long-term bonds between 1995 and 2008. We run forecasting regressions of realized excess returns on measures of net purchases of treasuries by both foreign official and private agents. We find a clear distinction in the effects of flows on excess returns. Official flows, with a negative and non-linear effect, appear similar to relative supply shocks; private net purchases, with a positive and linear effect, resemble flows that absorb excess supply and are thus compensated in equilibrium for this service, similar to the role of arbitrageurs in preferred-habitat models of the term structure., L’auteur étudie l’incidence des flux internationaux de capitaux sur les prix des actifs sous l’angle des primes de risque. Son objectif est de déterminer si les achats étrangers de titres du Trésor américain ont contribué de façon importante à la baisse des excédents de rendement des obligations à long terme observée entre 1995 et 2008. L’auteur a recours à des analyses de régression pour établir si des mesures des achats nets étrangers, d’origine officielle ou privée, de titres du Trésor peuvent aider à prévoir les excédents de rendement réalisés. Il constate que l’effet des flux de capitaux sur les excédents varie nettement selon leur provenance. Les flux officiels ont une incidence négative et non linéaire analogue à celle de chocs d’offre relative. À l’opposé, les achats nets privés ont un effet positif et linéaire et s’apparentent en cela à des flux qui viennent absorber l’offre excédentaire. Ils sont rémunérés à l’équilibre pour ce service, qui rappelle le rôle joué par les arbitragistes dans les modèles de structure des taux d’intérêt fondés sur la théorie de l’habitat préféré.

While the impact of exchange rate changes on economic growth has long been an issue of key importance in international macroeconomics, it has received renewed attention in recent years, owing to weaker growth rates and the debate on "currency wars". However, in spite of its prevalence in the policy debate, the connection between real exchange rates and growth remains an unsettled question in the academic literature. We fill this gap by providing an empirical assessment based on a broad sample of emerging and advanced economies. We assess the impact of appreciations, productivity booms and capital flow surges using a propensity-score matching approach to address causality issues. We show that appreciations associated with higher productivity have a larger impact on growth than a ppreciations associated with capital inflows. Furthermore, the appreciation per se tends to have a negative impact on growth. We provide a simple theoretical model that delivers the contrasted growth-appreciation pattern depending on the underlying shock. The model also implies adverse effects of shocks to international capital flows, so concerns about an appreciation are not inconsistent with concerns a bout a depreciation. The presence of an externality through firms´ destruction leads to inefficient allocations. Nonetheless, addressing them does not require a dampening of exchange rate movements.

While there are a number of theoretical arguments in favour of capital account convertibility, or free cross-border capital mobility, in the real world cross-border trade in financial assets can in fact reduce welfare due to the effects of domestic distortions. The following paper examines the causes of the Asian financial crises of the late 1990s in this light and presents some of the lessons that would be instructive for a more effective implementation of capital account convertibility.

In the 1990s currency crises arose in different regions, e.g. in Mexico, East Asia, Russia, Brazil and Ecuador, to mention only the most important ones. What are the main factors which may trigger such events? How does globalisation and deregulation of financial markets influence the emergence of a currency crisis? What forms of crises exist? Are they driven by fundamental imbalances in a country or are they caused by self-fulfilling mechanisms involving herd behaviour and destabilising speculation? To what extent do such crises reflect implicit governmental and international guarantees which may cause moral hazard and adverse selection, thereby increasing the risk behaviour of enterprises and banks?

International financial linkages, particularly through global bank flows, generate important questions about the consequences for economic and financial stability, including the ability of countries to conduct autonomous monetary policy. I address the monetary autonomy issue in the context of the international policy trilemma: Countries seek three typically desirable but jointly unattainable objectives-stable exchange rates, free international capital mobility, and monetary policy autonomy oriented toward, and effective at, achieving domestic goals. I argue that global banking entails some features that are distinct from the broad issues of capital market openness captured in existing studies. In principle, if global banks with affiliates in foreign markets can reduce frictions in international capital flows, then the macroeconomic policy trilemma could bind tighter and interest rates will exhibit more co-movement across countries. However, if the information content and stickiness of the claims and services provided are enhanced relative to a benchmark alternative, then global banks can weaken the trilemma rather than enhance it. The result is a prediction of heterogeneous effects on monetary autonomy, tied to the business models of the global banks and whether countries are investment or funding locations for those banks. Empirical tests of the trilemma support this view that global bank effects are heterogeneous and that the primary drivers of monetary autonomy are exchange rate regimes.

Countries with weaker domestic institutions hold fewer foreign assets and exhibit concentrated corporate ownership. An equilibrium business cycle model of international capital flows with corporate governance frictions between outside investors and insiders explains both phenomena. Investment dynamics under insider control leads relative dividend and labor income for outsiders to be more negatively correlated in countries with weaker institutions. Consequently, outsiders hold more domestic assets to hedge labor income risk. I provide empirical evidence on this hedging demand. Concentrated ownership arises because international diversification through the sale of domestic assets by insiders is penalized by lower stock market valuation.

The balance of payments' financial account aggregates a very heterogeneous set of capital flows. Among other features, these investments differ in terms of maturity, risk, liquidity and receptor. From this viewpoint, this paper analyzes comparatively the behavior of the main components of the financial account during the events of sudden stops in the net inflow of foreign capital to the emergent and developed countries. These events are identified in the literature as sharp and unexpected falls in the financial account surplus of a country as a result of the foreign investors' decisions to stop the financial flows to this country. The article concludes that these events are almost entirely explained by contraction of flows of portfolio investment flows and loans, whose average maturities are lower than that of the direct investment. In addition, investments in fixed income and for the public sector are relatively more stable than investments in variable income and for banks and private companies.

This thesis comprises four individual essays and deals with the question of how international financial integration may influence quality of economic institutions in developing countries. While the first three essays provide theoretical models of different channels, through which financial integration may affect institutional quality, the last work is an empirical investigation into the influence of liberalization of the financial account on institutional development. The first essay „Financial Integration in Autocracies: Greasing the Wheel or More to Steal?“ analyzes the influence of financial integration on institutional quality in an autocratically ruled economy. The essay provides a dynamic political-economic model in which a ruling elite uses its political power to expropriate the general population. Although financial integration reduces capital costs for entrepreneurs and thereby raises gross incomes in the private sector, the elite may counteract this effect by increasing the rate of expropriation. Since de facto political power is linked to economic resources, financial integration also has long run consequences for the distribution of power and for the rise of an entrepreneurial class. The second essay “Autocracies, Structure of the Economy, and Expropriation” also develops a model on elite's behavior in autocratically ruled economies. In contrast to the previous model, the ruling elite is also involved in the economic production process. The elite imposes a distortive tax on the entrepreneurial income in order to i) extract rents and ii) to influence the factor prices of the input factors increasing thereby its own economic profits. The structure of the economy is captured by the degree of complementarity between the production inputs provided by the general population and determines the extent of expropriation. The less dependent the elite is on the entrepreneurial activity, the higher is the equilibrium rate of expropriation. The results also show that a rise in the entrepreneurs' productivity, which may result from financial integration, raises the expropriation rate, this effect being stronger for lower values of the complementary parameter. The third essay “Mode of International Investment and Exogenous Risk of Expropriation” analyzes the relationship between the mode of international investment and institutional quality. The model assumes that foreign investors from a capital-rich North can either purchase productive assets in a capital-poor South and transfer their capital within integrated multinational firms (foreign direct investment) or they can form joint ventures with local asset owners. The South is ruled by an autocratic elite that may use its political power to expropriate productive assets. The expropriation risk lowers the incentive to provide specific capital in an integrated firm and distorts the decision between joint ventures and integrated production. By setting the institutional framework in the host country, the elite influences the risk of expropriation and thereby the resulting pattern of international production. Financial integration, which is reflected in a decline in investment costs, has an asymmetric effect on the equilibrium risk of expropriation: A decline in the costs of forming a joint venture raises the risk of expropriation, whereas a decline in the costs of foreign direct investments lowers it. The fourth essay “Financial Liberalization and Institutional Development” empirically analyzes the effects of de jure financial openness on institutional quality as captured by indicators on investment risk, corruption level, impartiality of judiciary system as well as the effectiveness of bureaucratic authorities. The results show that a higher degree of financial openness improves institutional quality in particular by reducing investment risks. However, according to the findings, financial liberalization may also lead to an increase in the level of corruption. In addition, the results show that if financial liberalization is supported by simultaneous political liberalization, the benign consequences of financial opening for the institutional performance are even larger, while financial deregulation in former socialist countries tends to worsen institutional quality.

This paper draws on the experience of emerging Europe and argues that foreign capital is an enviable development opportunity with tail risks. Financial integration and foreign savings supported growth in the EU12 and EU candidate countries. We argue that this was possible because of EU membership (actual or potential) and its role as an anchor for expectations. In contrast, the eastern partnership states did not benefit from the foreign savings-growth link. But financial integration also led to a buildup of vulnerabilities and now exposes emerging Europe to prolonged uncertainty and financial deleveraging due to eurozone developments. Nonetheless, we believe that external imbalances should not be eradicated-nor should emerging Europe pursue a policy of self-insurance. Instead, what we refer to as an acyclical fiscal policy stance could serve to counterbalance private sector behavior. Going forward, a more proactive macroprudential policy will also be needed to limit financial system vulnerabilities when external imbalances are large.

Since the 1980s, emerging countries have been urged to welcome foreign capital inflows. The result has often been a pattern of surges, where excessive inflows were followed by damaging "sudden stops" and reversals. This was dramatically evident in the Asian crisis of 1997 - 1998. Since that crisis, the emerging countries of East Asia have typically run current account surpluses and have accumulated substantial foreign exchange reserves. This has kept them largely protected from the impact of volatile capital flows, but this strategy is neither sustainable nor optimal. What is needed is a strategy that makes use of the potential benefits of capital "flowing downhill" (that would require these countries to run current account deficits) while at the same time protecting them from both the excessive inflows and the reversals. This strategy needs to take account not only of the fickle nature of the capital flows, but the structurally-higher profitability which is characteristic of emerging countries, which motivates the excessive inflows. This strategy would require more active management of both exchange rates and capital flows than has been the accepted "best practice&". This requires a substantial shift in the current policy mindset. The International Monetary Fund has shifted some distance on this issue, but has further to go.

This paper sets up a general oligopolistic equilibrium model with two countries that differ in the centralization of union wage setting. Being interested in the consequences of openness, we show that, in the short-run, trade increases welfare and employment in both locations, and it raises income of capital owners as well as workers. In the long run, capital outflows from the country with the more centralized wage setting generate winners and losers and make the two countries more dissimilar in terms of unemployment of welfare. Decentralization of wage setting can successfully prevent capital outflow and the export of jobs.

In this paper, we provide an overview of the relationship between international migration and international trade as well as capital movements. After taking a brief historical perspective, we first investigate migration flows between two countries in a static, neoclassical context. We allow for a disaggregated view of migration that distinguishes between different types of labor and emphasizes the distinction between migration flows and pre-existing stocks. We focus on different welfare channels, on internal income distribution, international income convergence and on whether migration and trade are substitutes or complements. Complementarity/substitutability hinges on whether countries share the same technology, and the pivotal question is whether or not technology is convex. Generally, under substitutability between trade and migration and with convex technology, globalization tends to lead to convergence. Moreover, under non-convex technology trade and migration tend to be complements. Turning to dynamic models with capital adjustment costs and capital mobility, the same is true for the relationship between migration and capital flows. Nevertheless, in neoclassical models, we may observe emigration at the same time as capital accumulates during the transition to a steady state. Moreover, we can explain reverse migration. We also touch upon the effects of migration on the accumulation of both knowledge and human capital, by invoking endogenous growth theory. Finally, we review the empirical literature exploring the link between migration and trade. The discussion is based on the so called gravity model of trade, in which trade between pairs of countries is related to measures of their respective sizes, preferences, and trade costs. We revisit the identification of the overall trade-creating effect of migration and its break-down into the trade channel and the preference channel. We clarify the role of product differentiation for the size of estimated effects, discuss the role of immigrants' education and occupation, and emphasize direct and indirect networks and their trade-enhancing potential.

This paper explores the determinants of regional differences in interest rates based on a simple theoretical model of loan pricing. The model demonstrates how risks, costs, market concentration and scale economies jointly determine the bank's interest rates. Using recent data of the Indonesian local credit markets, we find that regional interest rate variations are positive and significantly affected by the banks' risk factor, the operating costs, and market concentration. Scale economies negatively affect the interest rates. These findings help to explain geographical segmentation in loan markets.

Financial globalization has gathered attention since the early 1990s because of its macro-financial and crisis implications and its perceived large expansion. But financial globalization has taken different forms over time. This paper examines two important concurrent dimensions of financial globalization relevant for emerging countries: diversification and offshoring. The diversification dimension of globalization refers to the increase in foreign assets and liabilities in countries' portfolios. Offshoring, instead, is related to the reallocation of financial activities to international markets, namely, to where transactions take place regardless of who holds the assets. We find that globalization via the diversification channel has expanded throughout during the 2000s as domestic residents invested more abroad and foreigners increased their domestic investments. However, financial globalization via offshoring has displayed more mixed patterns, with variations across markets and countries. We also show that the nature of financing through both diversification and offshoring has improved for emerging countries.

Does capital flow from rich to poor countries? We revisit the Lucas paradox and explore the role of capital account restrictions in shaping capital flows at various stages of economic development. We find that, when accounting for the degree of capital account openness, the prediction of the neoclassical theory is confirmed: less developed countries tend to experience net capital inflows and more developed countries tend to experience net capital outflows, conditional on various countries' characteristics.

The paper uses the emerging Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Economic Community as a motivation to explore the issue of capital flow management in an economic community. Although there is an increasingly shared view that capital flow management measures should be part of the routine policy toolkit of emerging market economies, the logic of an economic community appears incompatible with extensive controls on capital flows. Substantial, if not complete, capital account liberalization must therefore take place across ASEAN. Few ASEAN countries are expected to have dismantled all capital account restrictions by 2015, thus requiring little need to introduce an entirely new set of capital flow management measures. Over the longer term, the ultimate requirements of an economic community seem to dictate that any remaining measures be market-based and not residency-based. Regional cooperation would be useful in enhancing individual country efforts, including collectively agreeing on the definition of a crisis and affirming the right of a member country to introduce an emergency measure in the event of a crisis. Our assessment is that most of the inflow restrictions could be removed quickly without creating additional risks; controls on private capital outflows could also be relaxed, albeit more judiciously, if for no other reason than to promote regional financial integration.

[Introduction ...] This paper examines the problems of the excessive volatility of capital inflows in emerging market countries and its consequences on their exchange rates. The second section looks at the pattern of capital flows received by these countries, and the third section focuses on exchange rates. It first analyses the theoretical debate on setting exchange rates: the growing importance of financial flows on determining them, and whether it could be seen as a market-clearing price. Then it presents the links through which the exchange rate affects an economy, focusing on the specificities of developing countries which amplify these impacts. Later it discusses the changes seen in developing countries’ choices of exchange rate regimes in light of the new pattern of capital flows. The fourth section analyses these issues during the global financial crisis.

This paper adopts a flexible framework to assess both short- and long-run business cycle linkages between six Latin American (LA) countries and the four largest economies in the world (namely the US, the Euro area, Japan and China) over the period 1980:I-2011:IV. The result indicate that within the LA region there are considerable differences between countries, success stories coexisting with extremely vulnerable economies. They also show that the LA region as a whole is largely dependent on external developments, especially in the years after the great recession of 2008 and 2009. The trade channel appears to be the most important source of business cycle co-movement, whilst capital flows are found to have a limited role, especially in the very short run.

The present paper examines the degree of comovement of gross capital inflows, which is a highly sensitive issue for policy makers. We estimate a dynamic hierarchical factor model that is able to decompose inflows in a sample of 47 economies into (i) a global factor common to all types of flows and all recipient countries, (ii) a factor specific to a given type of capital inflows, (iii) a regional factor and (iv) a country-specific component. We find that the latter explains by far the largest fraction of fluctuations in capital inflows followed by regional factors, which are particularly important for emerging markets' FDI and portfolio inflows as well as bank lending to emerging Europe. The global factor, however, explains only a small share of overall variation. The exposure to global drivers of capital flows, i.e. the global factor and the factor specific to each type of capital inflows, is particularly pronounced for countries with a more developed financial system. A fixed exchange rate regime does not shield countries from the ebb and flow of global capital flow cycles.

I develop an open economy portfolio model to study how leveraged investors' wholesale funding affects the international transmission of shocks. Under binding borrowing limits, there is a link between the international investment positions of integrated economies as investors diversify the asset side of their balance sheets. Building on this mechanism, I introduce the liability side, allowing investors sell domestic and foreign bonds and capturing changes in counterparty risk in a stylized way (i.e., debt-to-asset ratios are specific to each borrower and time-varying). I model and parameterize these ratios, conditional on portfolio choice. I can solve for portfolios taking advantage of the link between assets and liabilities which is implied by the borrowing constraints. Equilibrium portfolios feature home funding bias, which is justified by a crucial interaction between the terms of trade and the tightness of the borrowing constraints. Dynamically, this interaction implies that the source of debt which is most sensitive to shocks is foreign funding. In fact, any shock creates a wedge between the cost of funding in different countries; the value of collateral must adjust accordingly through asset prices. Yet, asset prices are mainly affected by financiers' concern for counterparty risk: impact effects are deep and in line with the terms of trade effect. Combined, these effects have somehow novel implications for the net foreign asset positions. The cumulative effects have instead more mixed results on fluctuations.

We study international business cycles and capital flows in the UK, the United States and the Emerging Periphery in the period 1885-1939. Based on the same set of parameters, our model explains current account dynamics under both the Classical Gold Standard and during the Interwar period. We interpret this as evidence for Gold Standard mentality: the expectation formation mechanism with respect to major macroeconomic variables driving the current account - output, exchange rates and interest rates - has remained fundamentally stable between the two periods. Nonetheless, the macroeconomic environment changed: Volatility increased generally, but less so for international capital flows than for GDP. This pattern is consistent with shocks in the Interwar period becoming more persistent and more global.

We decompose capital flows -- both debt and equity -- into public and private components and study their relationship with productivity growth. This exercise reveals that international capital flows are mainly shaped by government decisions and sovereign to sovereign transactions. Specifically, we show: (i) international capital flows net of government debt are positively correlated with growth and allocated according to the neoclassical predictions; (ii) international capital flows net of official aid flows, which are mostly accounted as debt, are also positively correlated with productivity growth consistent with the predictions of the neoclassical model; (iii) public debt flows are negatively correlated with growth only if government debt is financed by another sovereign and not by private lenders. Our results show that the failure to consider official flows as the main driver of uphill flows and global imbalances is an important shortcoming of the recent literature.

Regional monetary and financial cooperation in Asia has been discussed for years. To move towards a coordinated exchange rate policy, Ogawa and Shimizu (2005) proposed both an Asian Monetary Unit (AMU), which is a common currency basket computed as a weighted average of the thirteen ASEAN+3 currencies, and AMU Deviation Indicators (AMU DIs), which indicates the deviation of each Asian currency in terms of the AMU compared with the benchmark rate. The AMU and the AMU DIs are considered both as surveillance measures under the Chiang Mai Initiative and as benchmarks for coordinated exchange rate policies among Asian countries. In this paper, the authors show that monitoring the AMU and the AMU DIs plays an important role in the regional surveillance process under the Chiang Mai Initiative. By using daily and monthly data of AMU and AMU DIs for the period from January 2000 to June 2010, which are available from the website of the Research Institute of Economy, Trade, and Industry (RIETI), they examine their usefulness as a surveillance indicator. Our studies of AMU and AMU DIs confirm the following: first, an AMU peg system stabilizes the nominal effective exchange rate (NEER) of each Asian country. Second, the AMU and the AMU DIs could signal overvaluation or undervaluation for each of the Asian currencies. Third, trade imbalances within the region have been growing as the AMU DIs have been widening. Fourth, the AMU DIs could predict huge capital inflows and outflows for each Asian country. The above findings support the usefulness of using the AMU and the AMU DIs as surveillance indicators for monetary cooperation in Asia.

Data on the growth performances of countries with similar comparative (dis)advantage and political institutions reveal a striking variation across world regions. While some former autoc- racies such as the East Asian growth miracles have done remarkably well; others such as the Latin American economies have grown at much lower rates. In this paper; we propose a political economy explanation of these diverging paths of development by addressing the preferences of the country?s political elite. We build a theoretical framework where factors of production owned by the political elites di¤er across countries. In each country; the incumbent autocrat will cater to the preferences of the elites when setting trade policy and the property rights regime. We show how stronger property rights may lead to capital accumulation and labor reallocation to the manufacturing sector. This; in turn; can lead to a shift in the comparative advantage; a decision to open up to trade and an in?ow of more productive foreign capital. Consistent with a set of stylised facts on East Asia and Latin America; we argue that strong property rights are crucial for success upon globalization.