It is well understood that investment serves as a shock absorber at the time of crisis. The duration of the drag on investment, however, is perplexing. For the nine Asian economies we focus on in this study, average investment/GDP is about 6 percentage points lower during 1998-2012 than its...

Since 1990 capital has flowed from industrial countries to developing regions like Latin America, and parts of Asia. Reentry into international capital markets is a welcome turn of events for most countries. However, capital inflows are often associated with inflationary pressures, a real...

Given all the ambiguities about the outcomes of the financial liberalization process, it is relevant to ask what the systematic, cross-country evidence reveals on several questions, including: What happens to key macroeconomic and variables following domestic and external financial...

In recent years, many developing countries have intervened in foreign exchange markets to offset to some extent the effect on their economies of large capital flows. Often, changes in reserve requirements were used to mitigate the impact of that intervention on domestic money supplies. Because...

This paper examines the empirical evidence on currency crises and proposes a specific early warning system. This system involves monitoring the evolution of several indicators that tend to exhibit an unusual behavior in the periods preceding a crisis. When an indicator exceeds a certain...

This essay has four objectives. The first is to document the current episode of capital inflows to Latin America based on data for ten Latin American countries. 6 The second is to compare the Latin American experience with that of a number of Asian countries that have also been the recipients of...

More frequent and increasingly severe crises are encouraging emerging market economies to seek means to make themselves less vulnerable to sudden stops in capital flows. Capital controls have been widely discussed, but dollarization may offer a longer-term and more market-friendly solution.

This study analyzes and provides empirical tests of early warning indicators of banking and currency crises in emerging economies. The aim is to identify key empirical regularities in the run-up to banking and currency crises that would enable officials and private market participants to...

Comment: This paper by Barry Bosworth and Susan Collins is a welcome contribution to the capital flows literature in that it investigates whether there are important behavioral differences across types of flows and their effects on economic activity, saving, and investment. Previous studies...

Historically, periods of high indebtedness have been associated with a rising incidence of default or restructuring of public and private debts. A subtle type of debt restructuring takes the form of "financial repression." Financial repression includes directed lending to government by captive...