Valuation effects in the Spanish International Investment Position

The International Investment Position records the value of foreign assets and liabilities of an economy in a given date. Its evolution is determined by the financial transactions of the Balance of Payments, which affects the volume of assets and liabilities, by differences in the valuation of the stock, derived from changes in prices or exchange rates, and by other adjustments, that are primarily reclassifications of foreign assets. The objective of this article is to compute the price and exchange rate effects implicit in the evolution of the International Investment Position of Spain, taking into account its possible limitations. The valuation effects are determined by the characteristics of the financial instrument and the information sources available for every heading of the IIP. In this article, disaggregated data by denomination currency of the instrument are used for every heading. On the other hand, for portfolio investment, asset-by-asset data available for 2003 and 2004 are used. In addition, for IED data, which are mainly not recorded at market price (and given that price changes for those instruments between 1993 and 2006 have been substantial), it is developed a methodology in order to reconstruct the value of IED assets and liabilities, including the valuation associated with price changes. The conclusions of this work for the Spanish case provide evidence that stock revaluation explains a very important share of the IIP changes for the latest years. The 55% of the increase of the IIP between 1993 and 2004 is related to value changes due to price or exchange rate changes. The accumulation of these value changes is equal to the 19% of the GDP of the year 2004. The decomposition of this effect between price effect and exchange rate effect can be estimated for 1997-2004 period, and the increase in the net IIP debt position (247.930 million euros) can be explained in a 52% by Balance of Payments transactions, and 47.3% is the result of revaluation of the instruments and other adjustments. This 47.3% can be decomposed in a 27.6% due to price effects, 10.1% due to exchange rate effects and the remaining 9.6% is the result of other non determined variations.