How the Machinery of International Finance Runs with Sand in its Wheels

The dramatic swings in international capital movements in recent years have renewed interest in restrictions on capital flows. This paper provides a model of international asset flows and domestic equity price formation incorporating three restrictions on capital flows. A transaction tax introduces significant asymmetries in the reaction of asset prices to financial and real shocks but has no long-lived effects. Policies targeted to the level of net foreign debt by imposing a tax or outright controls do influence the steady-state levels of the real exchange rate and relative equity prices