Capital Controls,Public Debt and Currency Crises

This paper examines the possibility that, contrary to conventional wisdom, capital controls accelerate currency crises. Theoretical analysis shows that capital controls can constitute an additional burden on government budget and so bring forward the onset of crises. Since perfect capital mobility does not occur, domestic interest rates may deviate from world interest rates. High interest rates under capital controls create an additional cost of servicing outstanding domestic public debt, precipitating crises. Even though the government can delay crises with capital controls, welfare may be less than in a situation with perfect capital mobility.     

Capital controls and welfare

This paper computes welfare levels under different degree of capital controls and compares them with the welfare level under perfect capital mobility by using the methodology of Schmitt-Grohé and Uribe (2007). We show that perfect capital mobility is not always optimal and that capital controls may enhance an economy’s welfare level. There exists an optimal degree of capital-account restriction that achieves a higher level of welfare than that under perfect capital mobility, if the economy has costly financial intermediaries. The results of our analysis imply that as the domestic financial intermediaries are less efficient, the government should impose stricter capital controls in the form of a tax on foreign borrowing.     

Political economy of taxation,debt ceilings,and growth

This study presents voting on policies, including labor and capital income taxes and public debt, in an overlapping-generations model with physical and human capital accumulation, and analyzes the effects of a debt ceiling on a government's policy formation and its impact on growth and welfare. The results show that the debt ceiling induces the government to shift the tax burdens from the older to younger generations, but stimulates physical capital accumulation and may increase public education expenditure, resulting in a higher growth rate. Alternatively, the debt ceiling is measured from the viewpoint of a benevolent planner and lowering the debt ceiling (i.e., tightening fiscal discipline) makes it possible for the government to approach the planner's allocation in an aging society.     

Intergenerational conflict and public sector size and structure: A rationale for debt limits?

How do budget rules influence the size and structure of the public sector? This question is considered in an overlapping generations political economy model. The different horizons of agents influence their voting behaviour and lead to excessive deficit financing and debt accumulation, reducing welfare of all subsequent generations. Along an equilibrium trajectory with increasing debt, the tax burden increases and public sector activities are crowded out due to the increasing costs of debt servicing. A debt ceiling may halt this process leading to less debt, more public consumption and higher welfare.     

A TALE OF TAX POLICIES IN OPEN ECONOMIES

To evaluate fiscal policy reforms for Euro‐area countries, this article develops and calibrates a small open economy model. Debt reduction reforms require higher tax rates in the short term in exchange for lower rates in the long term as the debt‐servicing burden falls. Using the capital income tax to implement such a policy leads to welfare gains; the consumption tax, a very small welfare gain; and the labor income tax, a welfare loss. Holding fixed the long‐run debt–output ratio, offsetting a lower capital income tax with either a higher labor income or consumption tax generally yields welfare gains.     

The Elusive Gains from International Financial Integration

Standard theoretical arguments tell us that countries with relatively little capital benefit from financial integration as foreign capital flows in and speeds up the process of convergence. We show in a calibrated neoclassical model that conventionally measured welfare gains from this type of convergence appear relatively limited for the typical emerging market country. The welfare gain from switching from financial autarky to perfect capital mobility is roughly equivalent to a 1% permanent increase in domestic consumption for the typical non-OECD country. This is negligible relative to the welfare gain from a take-off in domestic productivity of the magnitude observed in some of these countries.     

Growth and equilibrium indeterminacy: the role of capital mobility

Summary. The paper presents a human capital driven endogenous growth model which, in general, permits a multiplicity of equilibrium balanced growth paths. It is shown that allowing for perfect capital mobility across countries increases the range of parameter values for which the model permits equilibrium indeterminacy. As opposed to the closed capital markets case, simple restrictions on preferences are no longer sufficient to eliminate the indeterminacy. Intuitively, under perfect capital mobility agents are able to smooth consumption completely. This induces an economy with open capital markets to behave like a closed economy with linear preferences thereby increasing the possibility of equilibrium indeterminacy. Received: 18 November 1998; revised version: 10 August 1999     

Capital Inflow in the Presence of Endogenous Labour Supply and Monopolistic Competition

This paper examines the impact of capital mobility within the context of a simple general equilibrium model where the supply of labour is endogenous and the producer services sector is subject to monopolistic competition. It is shown that the presence of monopolistic competition influences the size of all comparative static results. The paper also shows that the size of the elasticity of substitution between leisure and consumption of the final good plays a crucial role in determining the impact of changes in the supply of capital on utility-maximising labour supply and welfare. Specifically, it is shown that capital mobility has no impact on optimal labour supply if the elasticity of substitution is equal to unity. The impact of a small capital inflow on welfare can be negative if the elasticity of substitution is sufficiently larger than unity.     

Sudden stops in a currency union – some lessons from the euro area

During the Great Financial Crisis several euro area Member States with current account deficits were subject to sharp reversals of private capital flows. We examine how the specific policy rules of the euro area's payments system TARGET2 affects the macroeconomic adjustments to sudden stops. We find that – in the short run – public capital flows in form of TARGET2 help euro area‐deficit countries to stabilize output, consumption, and investment after a sudden stop of private capital inflows. In the long run, however, euro area countries suffer under a prolonged economic recovery and accumulated large public debt as well as higher welfare losses relative to euro peggers.     

Odious Debt in an Imperfect World

The odious debt problem refers to a government's ability to borrow for elite consumption while the general population repays. Although an intuitive response is to ban lending to such regimes, this paper shows that if a government faces endogenous replacement risk, then an international odious debt doctrine which (i) decreases the country's debt ceiling; (ii) decreases the likelihood that the citizens must repay the debt; or (iii) increases the government's cost of borrowing for a given default risk can all decrease citizens' welfare. These findings suggest that, even when a regime is clearly odious, allowing it to borrow up to a point may be preferable to a complete lending ban.     

Debt Policy Rules in an Open Economy

In a small open economy model of endogenous growth with public capital accumulation, we examine the effects of a debt policy rule under which the government must reduce its debt–GDP ratio if it exceeds the criterion level. To sustain public debt at a finite level, the government should adjust public spending rather than the income tax rate. The long‐run debt–GDP ratio should be kept sufficiently low to avoid equilibrium indeterminacy. Under sustainability and determinacy, a tighter (looser) debt rule brings welfare gains when the world interest rate is relatively high (low).     

INTERNATIONAL FACTOR MOBILITY,NONTRADED GOODS AND TARIFF REFORM*

Within models of traded and nontraded goods, that ignore international factor mobility, the literature on tariff reform has established sufficient conditions under which a policy that reduces (increases) the highest (lowest) tariff to the level of the second highest (lowest) rate, or a policy that moves proportionally all tariffs to a given number improves welfare. The present paper generalizes previous studies by introducing perfect international capital mobility. It demonstrates that if all goods are normal in consumption and the nontraded good markets are locally Walras stable, then a reform policy that reduces (increases) the highest (lowest) tariff to the level of the next highest (lowest) rate improves welfare if (i) the good with the highest (lowest) tariff rate is a net substitute to all other traded goods, and (ii) the nontraded goods are net substitutes to all other goods. Second, a policy reform that moves all tariffs to a given number is always welfare improving.     

The choice of licensing versus direct foreign investment in developing countries

For developing, technology-receiving countries, direct foreign investment is always better than licensing in the short run with sectoral immobility of capital. In the long run with perfect mobility of capital between sectors, the welfare rankings of the two scenarios are dependent upon the amount of domestic capital. The likely case is that the developing country would have a smaller amount of domestic capital than foreign investors, and hence licensing could yield higher national welfare.The authors are indebted to many useful comments of two anonymous referees. The authors, however, are solely responsible for any remaining shortcomings.     

Labor Mobility, Trade, and Social Capital

Labor market integration raises welfare in the absence of distortions. This paper examines labor and goods market integration in a general‐equilibrium model with social capital. The findings are: (i) labor market integration has an ambiguous impact on welfare, and raises it if the goods and labor skills are sufficiently different; (ii) compared to Pareto optimum, labor mobility (social capital) is excessively large (depleted); (iii) trade is superior to labor market integration if trading costs are no higher than private migration costs, otherwise the outcome is ambiguous; and (iv) the creation of new institutions in response to labor market integration has an ambiguous impact on welfare.     

Foreign Debt,Foreign Direct Investment and Volatility

We investigate how foreign debt and foreign direct investment (FDI) affect the growth and welfare of a stochastically growing small open economy. First, we find that foreign debt influences the growth of domestic wealth by lowering the cost of capital, while FDI affects the country's welfare by providing an additional source of permanent income. Second, a decline in domestic investment may improve domestic welfare as FDI replaces the gap. Even when the welfare deteriorates, its magnitude is mitigated, leaving more room for discretionary fiscal policy. Third, a fiscal policy aimed to stabilize domestic output fluctuations needs to be conducted not to crowd out the welfare benefit of FDI too much. Fourth, an economy with both types of foreign capital experiences wider welfare swings by external volatility shocks than the one with foreign debt alone, while the welfare effects from domestic volatility shocks are mitigated. The welfare effects of fiscal shocks are much smaller with both types of foreign capital. Lastly, the first-best labor income tax covers the government absorption by the labor's share of total output, and the capital income tax covers the rest. Investment is penalized or subsidized depending on the social marginal cost-gain differential.     

An analysis of Turkey's accession to the European Union

We build a two‐country dynamic general equilibrium model to study whether European citizens would benefit from the eventual accession of Turkey to the European Union (EU). The results of the simulations show that Turkey's accession is welfare enhancing for Europeans, provided that Turkish total factor productivity (TFP) increases sufficiently after enlargement. In the benchmark model with no capital mobility, the Europeans are better off if the Turkish TFP increase bridges more than 21% of the initial TFP gap between Turkey and the EU. This figure increases to 33% when capital mobility is introduced.     

The Financial Resource Curse*

In this paper, we present a model of the financial resource curse (i.e., episodes of abundant access to foreign capital coupled with weak productivity growth). We study a two‐sector (i.e., tradable and non‐tradable) small open economy. The tradable sector is the engine of growth, and productivity growth is increasing with the amount of labor employed by firms in the tradable sector. A period of large capital inflows, triggered by a fall in the interest rate, is associated with a consumption boom. While the increase in tradable consumption is financed through foreign borrowing, the increase in non‐tradable consumption requires a shift of productive resources toward the non‐tradable sector at the expenses of the tradable sector. The result is stagnant productivity growth. We show that capital controls can be welfare‐enhancing and can be used as a second‐best policy tool to mitigate the misallocation of resources during an episode of financial resource curse.     

The composition of capital inflows when emerging market firms face financing constraints

The composition of capital inflows to emerging market economies tends to follow a predictable dynamic pattern across the business cycle. In most emerging market economies, total inflows are pro-cyclical, with debt and portfolio equity flowing in first, followed later in the expansion by foreign direct investment (FDI). To understand the dynamic composition of these flows, we use a small open economy (SOE) framework to model the composition of capital inflows as the equilibrium outcome of emerging market firms' financing decisions. We show how costly external financing and FDI search costs generate a state contingent cost of financing such that the cheapest source of financing depends on the phase of the business cycle. In this manner, the financial frictions are able to explain the interaction between the types of flows and deliver a time-varying composition of flows, as well as other standard features of emerging market business cycles. If, as this work suggests, flows are an equilibrium outcome of firms' financing decisions, then volatility of capital inflows is not necessarily bad for an economy. Furthermore, using capital controls to shut down one type of flow and encourage another is certain to have both short- and long-run welfare implications.     

A dynamic factor approach to domestic capital mobility

This article analyzes capital mobility within Japan based on the consumption-based correlation method developed by Obstfeld (Capital mobility: the impact on consumption, investment and growth, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994). This theory suggests that consumption in one region is closely related to that in other regions if the capital market is open. We test this theoretical implication in the panel data context using the dynamic factor model which enables us to estimate unobservable common factors. Then we provide evidence of perfect capital mobility and capital integration having advanced rapidly between 1965 and 1975. Furthermore, the common factor is found to affect regional consumption heterogeneously and to be closely associated with stock returns.     

Public Debt,Terms of Trade and Welfare: The Role of Capital Production Shares,External Balances,and Dynamic (In)efficiency

In view of still large external imbalances across the world economy and dramatically risen public debts in major advanced economies, this paper reconsiders the relationship between public debt, the terms of trade and welfare in a two-good, two-country overlapping generations model with technological differences across countries. We find that the terms of trade effect of a public debt shock depends only on international differences in capital production shares and the dynamic (in)efficiency of the world economy. As in a model with similar capital production shares, domestic welfare rises and foreign welfare decreases when Home has a positive external balance and the Golden Rule holds. Under dynamic efficiency, welfare decreases in the debt-expanding, net foreign creditor country if she has a relatively smaller capital production share, and if the welfare effect through the accumulation channel is negative. In contrast, under dynamic inefficiency she can increase her welfare by debt expansion.