This paper applies the overreaction hypothesis of De Bondt and Thaler (1985), developed for stock price behaviour, to capital flows to emerging markets. We find that a surge in capital flows, or what we call a capital boom, can predict future sharp contractions in capital flows, or sudden stops....

This paper develops a simple analytic framework to analyze the effects of capital surges and sudden stops in the financial account of the balance of payments in emerging economies. In this model, capital inflows are largely exogenous to the recipient economies, they are very large when scaled to...