This paper shows that the effect of capital account liberalization on growth depends upon the environment in which that policy occurs. A theoretical model demonstrates the possibility of an inverted-U shaped relationship between the responsiveness of growth to capital account liberalization and...

While substantial empirical research has evaluated the question of whether capital account openness promotes economic growth, this paper finds empirical evidence for cases where the opposite is true--that a policy of capital controls can promote economic growth, when combined with a policy of...

Financial openness is often associated with higher rates of economic growth. We show that the impact of openness on factor productivity growth is more important than the effect on capital growth. This explains why the growth effects of liberalization appear to be largely permanent, not...

We present a new empirical decomposition of the effects of financial liberalization on economic growth and on the incidence of crises. Our empirical estimates show that the direct effect of financial liberalization on growth by far outweighs the indirect effect via a higher propensity to crisis....

We examine the effects of both equity market liberalization and capital account openness on real consumption growth variability. We show that financial liberalization is mostly associated with lower consumption growth volatility. Our results are robust, surviving controls for business-cycle...

There is no agreement regarding the growth-enhancing effects of financial liberalization, mainly because it is associated with risky international bank flows, lending booms, and crises. In this paper we make the case for liberalization despite the occurrence of crises. We show that in developing...

In this paper I use a panel data set to investigate the mechanics of sudden stops of capital inflows and current account reversals. I am particularly interested in four questions: (a) What is the relationship between sudden stops and current account reversals? (b) To what extent does financial...