Demography and low-frequency capital flows

We consider the role of demographic trends in driving international capital flows in a multicountry overlapping generations model in which saving decisions are tied to agents' life expectancy. Capital flows reflect differences between saving and investment across countries. Demographic changes affect the aggregate accumulation of assets in two ways: by changing life expectancy which changes individual household saving behavior, and by changing the age distribution of the population by which individual household decisions are aggregated. We use a quantitative version of the model to illustrate the impact of demography on capital flows and net foreign assets in China, Germany, Japan, and the United States.     

The composition of international capital flows: risk sharing through foreign direct investment

Evidence on international capital flows suggests that foreign direct investment (FDI) is less volatile than other financial flows. To explain this finding I model international capital flows under the assumptions of imperfect enforcement of financial contracts and inalienability of FDI. Imperfect enforcement of contracts leads to endogenous financing constraints and the pricing of default risk. Inalienability implies that it is not as advantageous to expropriate FDI relative to other flows. These features combine to give a risk sharing advantage to FDI over other capital flows. This risk sharing advantage of FDI translates into a lower default premium and lower sensitivity to changes in a country’s financing constraint.The model offers the new implication that financially constrained countries should borrow relatively more through FDI. This is because FDI is harder to expropriate and not because FDI is more productive or less volatile. Using several creditworthiness and country risk ratings to measure financing constraints, I present new evidence linking FDI and financing constraints. Moreover, numerical simulations of the model generate stronger serial correlation for FDI than for other flows into developing countries. This corroborates the view that non-FDI flows are more short-term and more likely to change direction.     

Size,Growth, and Variance among the World's Largest Non-merged Banks

This paper analyses growth, size, and variance of the capital, assets, and pre-tax profits of large international banks during 1987-97.We test hypotheses on whether size matters. It turns out that there is an inverse relationship between the amount of bank capital, assets, and profits and the growth rate of these items.This is in line with the findings for US banks in the pre-BrettonWoods era. Furthermore, we did not find, in contrast with Tschoegl's observations for international banks in the 1970s, a negative relationship between the size of large banks and the variability of growth in capital, assets, or profits. We conclude that size is not a self-sustaining attribute of international banks.     

Problems with credit rating and reporting systems in Mexico: A barrier to North America's full economic development?

In many regions of the globe today outside the US and Canada, existing networks for evaluating borrowers' credit histories, for recording borrowers' pledges of assets backing loans, and for the legal enforcement of creditor claims are often poorly developed. Inside North America these problems with credit information flows and legal enforcement systems are most evident inside Mexico, where credit reporting networks and the courts work under a somewhat different set of rules than in Canada and the United States. A national mail survey of more than 300 US banks lending across international boundaries into Mexico found that many US bankers have reservations about the credibility of credit reporting and credit security systems inside Mexico. If these reservations persist, they can lead to a fundamental restructuring of that developing nation's industry that could discourage international capital inflows and curtail the emergence of small business. Indeed, unless current credit information flows are more fully integrated and are of more uniform quality throughout North America, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is likely to continue to fall short of its promise of significant job growth and improved living standards throughout the continent. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Financial Globalisation and Emerging Markets Volatility

The volatility of capital flows to emerging market (EM) countries and frequency of financial crises have imposed high welfare costs on the countries involved. The empirical literature provides, at best, a mixed picture on the relationship between long‐run EM country growth and financial integration. Meanwhile, the prevailing policy discourse regarding reform of the international financial system remains incomplete: the focus has largely been on either institutional and policy measures required of EM countries or international crisis‐resolution procedures. The role played by private financial markets and institutions in the developed world has not received adequate attention. This paper describes some of the structural features inherent in today's financial markets that directly contribute to the instability in EM capital flows.     

Who Benefits from Workers with General Skills? Countervailing Incentives in Labour Contracts

In a principal–agent model with adverse selection and moral hazard the impact of the agent's transferable human capital on incentives is analysed. It is shown that under asymmetric information the employer (principal) prefers a worker (agent) with general skills to a similarly productive worker with firm‐specific skills although the reservation utility of a worker with general (i.e. marketable) skills is higher. The principal's information costs are lower when workers have general skills than in the case where workers possess only firm‐specific human capital because of countervailing incentives. The optimal contract for workers with general skills differs from the standard screening contract in that it involves pooling.     

International capital flows,returns and world financial integration

International capital flows have increased dramatically since the 1980s, with much of the increase being due to trade in equity and bond markets. Such developments are often attributed to the increased integration of world financial markets. We present a model that allows us to examine how greater integration in world financial markets affects the behavior of international capital flows and financial returns. Our model predicts that international capital flows are large (in absolute value) and very volatile during the early stages of financial integration when international asset trading is concentrated in bonds. As integration progresses and households gain access to world equity markets, the size and volatility of international bond flows decline. This is the natural outcome of greater risk sharing facilitated by increased integration. This pattern is consistent with declining volatility observed during 1975–2007 period in the G-7 countries. We also find that the equilibrium flows in bonds and stocks predicted by the model are larger than their empirical counterparts, and are largely driven by variations in equity risk premia. The model also predicts that volatility of equity and bond returns decline with integration, again consistent with the data for G-7 economies.     

Toward an ‘International Business’ Paradigm of Endogenous Growth: Multinationals and Governments as Co-Endogenisers

Endogenous growth theory has recently originated in economics. Building on this theory, this paper conceptualises the phenomenon of endogenous growth in terms of some new ideas developed in the field of international business (IB), especially Dunning's eclectic paradigm and his notion of macro-organisation policy. These ideas have so far not been linked to the notion of endogenous growth. At the same time, mainstream economics has not made much progress in exploring the MNC-government relationships through which growth-inducing 'mechanics' are created, a topic of great importance in IB. Both MNCs and governments complement each other in facilitating an efficient matching of ownership-specific assets (notably knowledge) with location-specific advantages through Dunning's OLI mechanism, thereby enabling the developing host countries to realise potential growth in an intensified manner, a new mode of endogenous growth that counteracts the law of diminishing returns. The phenomenon of MNC-cum-governmentdriven endogenous growth will be conceptualised.     

International portfolios, capital accumulation and foreign assets dynamics

Despite the liberalization of capital flows among OECD countries, equity home bias remains sizable. We depart from the two familiar explanations of equity home bias: transaction costs that impede international diversification, and terms of trade responses to supply shocks that provide risk sharing, so that there is little incentive to hold diversified portfolios. We show that the interaction of the following ingredients generates a realistic equity home bias: capital accumulation and international trade in stocks and bonds. In our model, domestic stocks are used to hedge fluctuations in local wage income. Terms of trade risk is hedged using bonds denominated in local goods and in foreign goods. In contrast to related models, the low level of international diversification does not depend on strongly countercyclical terms of trade. The model also reproduces the cyclical dynamics of foreign asset positions and of international capital flows.     

Financial super-markets: size matters for asset trade

Empirically, demand and market size effects play an important role for international trade in assets and the determination of asset prices. Financial integration decreases the cost of capital, asset prices increase with investors base and market size determines international financial flows. We present a two-country model with an endogenous number of financial assets, where the interaction of a risk diversification motive and market segmentation explains those facts. In our set up, an imperfectly competitive structure of financial markets emerges naturally and provides a new source for home bias in equity holdings. Due to co-ordination failures, the extent of financial market incompleteness is inefficiently high in equilibrium.     

International capital flows

The surge in international asset trade since the early 1990s has lead to renewed interest in models with international portfolio choice. We develop the implications of portfolio choice for both gross and net international capital flows in the context of a simple two-country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model. We focus on the time-variation in portfolio allocation following shocks, and resulting capital flows. Endogenous time-variation in expected returns and risk, which are the key determinants of portfolio choice, affect capital flows in often subtle ways. The model is consistent with a broad range of empirical evidence. An additional contribution of the paper is to overcome the technical difficulty of solving DSGE models with portfolio choice by developing a broadly applicable solution method.     

Home bias and high turnover: Dynamic portfolio choice with incomplete markets

Why do investors trade a lot in foreign assets and hold so little of them in their portfolios? This paper shows that both observations can arise naturally in the presence of nondiversifiable nontraded consumption risk when each country specializes in production, preferences exhibit consumption home bias, and asset markets are incomplete. Using a general equilibrium two-country, two-sector (tradable and nontradable) model of the world economy with production I show that low diversification occurs because variations in relative prices (i) increase the riskiness of foreign assets and (ii) facilitate risk-sharing across countries. Large and volatile capital flows are necessary to take advantage of international risk premia differentials that occur in response to productivity changes in the nontradable sector. I characterize the optimal portfolio holdings, the evolution of the investment opportunity set, the risk premium, and the dynamics of capital flows using a new methodology for solving dynamic general equilibrium models with incomplete markets and portfolio choice.     

Boom‐and‐bust Cycles,External Imbalances and the Real Exchange Rate

When the current account balance and net capital outflows do not exactly offset each other, international payment flows arise. Payment flows into a country push the real exchange rate up, payment outflows push it down. This article uses a model of optimal consumption and portfolio choice to determine the factors that drive international payment flows during boom‐and‐bust cycles. It shows that during such episodes, capital inflows first exceed the deficit on current account, strengthening the currency. Later on, when the return on domestic capital reverts to its normal level, the current account recovers, yet the overall decline of the net foreign asset position provokes a fall of the real exchange rate even below its initial level. Case studies of countries experiencing rapid economic expansions followed by economic and financial meltdowns confirm the article's theoretical predictions.     

The determinants of cross-border equity flows

We explore a new panel data set on bilateral gross cross-border equity flows between 14 countries, 1989-1996. We show that a “gravity” model explains international transactions in financial assets at least as well as goods trade transactions. Gross transaction flows depend on market size in source and destination country as well as trading costs, in which both information and the transaction technology play a role. Distance proxies some information costs, and other variables explicitly represent information transmission, an information asymmetry between domestic and foreign investors, and the efficiency of transactions. The geography of information is the main determinant of the pattern of international transactions, while there is weak support in our data for the diversification motive, once we control for the informational friction. We broaden the scope of our results by presenting some evidence linking the results on equity transactions to equity holdings.     

Credit constraints, equity market liberalizations and international trade

This paper provides evidence that credit constraints are an important determinant of international trade flows. I exploit shocks to the availability of external finance and examine the impact of equity market liberalizations on the export behavior of 91 countries in the 1980-1997 period. I show that liberalizations increase exports disproportionately more in financially vulnerable sectors that require more outside finance or employ fewer collateralizable assets. This result is not driven by cross-country differences in factor endowments and is independent of simultaneous trade policy reforms. Moreover, it obtains with equal strength in the full panel of countries as well as in both panel and event-study analyses of countries which removed capital controls during the sample period. Finally, the effects of liberalizations are more pronounced in economies with initially less active stock markets, indicating that foreign equity flows may substitute for an underdeveloped domestic financial system. Similarly, opening equity markets has a greater impact in the presence of higher trade costs caused by restrictive trade policies.     

The demand for safe assets in emerging economies and global imbalances: New empirical evidence

Recent economic theory has singled out mismatches between the supply and the demand of safe financial assets in emerging countries as drivers of international capital flows and, ultimately, global current account imbalances. This paper assesses empirically the contribution of such “search for safe assets” to the size and composition of emerging economies’ international asset portfolios. Excess demand for safe assets in financially less‐developed countries would imply that these countries hold disproportionately high shares of their total portfolios in foreign assets. Moreover, financially less‐developed countries would hold disproportionately high shares of their foreign portfolios in financially developed countries, which are the major producers of ostensibly safe assets. This paper finds little empirical support for these predictions. Financially less‐developed countries allocate a larger proportion of their total holdings to domestic assets. Even when focusing on their foreign portfolios, there is no evidence of a general bias towards the assets of financially developed countries. Overall, asset mismatches do not appear to explain the asset allocation of financially less‐developed countries.     

Myth,Sin and Redemption in Capital Account Liberalisation

The Fund's argument that capital account liberalisation in developing countries might appeal for justification to the recognised gains from free trade in goods and services was seriously undermined by the Asian financial crisis. Perhaps the most remarkable critique in view of his pre‐eminence in the development of international trade theory and policy was a short paper by Jagdish Bhagwati in which the Fund's parallel was described as a ‘myth’. Taking up the argument he advanced, this article explores further the underlying weakness of the Fund's case. Jagdish emphasised the discrepancy between the nebulous long‐term benefits from capital flow liberalisation and the painful consequences of the crises that they had recently occasioned. The relevance of the ‘original sin’ hypothesis in determining the magnitude of these costs is therefore discussed here with attention drawn to country inability to borrow readily in their own currencies as a reason for their acute exposure to exchange rate speculation. ‘Redemption’ for borrowers is then sought through an identification of sources of genuine comparative advantage in financial trade. Net flows of finance are not required for the realisation of these gains and a final section argues that there should be no presumption that net transfers improve welfare – just as Jagdish claimed.     

The impact of sovereign wealth funds on global financial markets

If sovereign wealth funds act similarly to private investors and thus allocate foreign assets according to market capitalisation rather than liquidity considerations, official portfolios reduce their “bias” towards the major reserve currencies — the US dollar and the euro. As a result, more capital flows “downhill“ from rich to less wealthy economies. In this scenario, the euro area and the United States would be subject to net capital outflows while Japan and the emerging markets would attract net capital inflows. The potential implications of a rebalancing of international capital flows for stock prices, interest rates and exchange rates remain uncertain, however. The authors wish to thank Marcel Fratzscher for excellents comments. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Central Bank.     

INTERNATIONAL TRADE COMPOSITION AND MEDIUM-RUN GROWTH: Evidence of a Causal Relationship

The motivation for this article stems from Mazumdar's (1996) hypothesis that international trade composition impacts a country's ability to achieve transitional economic growth. In his article, Mazumdar suggested that developing economies, generally known for exporting consumption goods and importing capital goods, benefit more from international trade than do developed economies. In addition to static gains, developing economies experience a decline in the replacement costs of capital as the relative price of capital falls with trade. To empirically test this hypothesis, a trade composition variable is created using unpublished SITC export and import data of both consumption and capital goods. Incorporating this variable into a linear equation, a Granger Causality test and a more extensive VAR test are performed for a select group of developed and developing economies. The empirical results are suggestive, and indicate some support for the hypothesis that trade composition "causes" medium-run transition.     

Sovereign credit ratings,capital flows and financial sector development in emerging markets

How does the sovereign credit ratings history provided by independent ratings agencies affect domestic financial sector development and international capital inflows to emerging countries? We address this question utilizing a comprehensive dataset of sovereign credit ratings from Standard and Poor's from 1995–2003 for a cross-section of 51 emerging markets. Within a panel data estimation framework, we examine financial sector development and the influence of sovereign credit ratings provision, controlling for various economic and corporate governance factors identified in the financial development literature. We find strong evidence that our sovereign credit rating measures do affect financial intermediary sector developments and capital flows. We find that i) long-term foreign currency sovereign credit ratings are important for encouraging financial intermediary development and for attracting capital flows. ii) Long-term local currency ratings stimulate domestic market growth but discourage international capital flows. iii) Short-term ratings (both foreign and local currency denominated) retard all forms of financial developments and capital flows. There are important implications in this research for policy makers to encourage the provision of longer-term credit ratings to promote financial development in emerging economies.