The Swiss franc is known to appreciate strongly during financial market turmoil, demonstrating its status as a typical safe haven currency. One possible mechanism behind this appreciation during times of global turmoil is assumed to be higher capital inflows to Switzerland. This paper attempts...

After the 1980s, capital flows have accelerated in the less developed countries and since Salter's seminal paper in 1959, it has been widely accepted that the real exchange rate respond to capital flows. Based on a simple model derived by Sjaastad and Manzur (1996) along the lines of Salter...

This paper surveys the nature of capital inflows into Asia since the peak of the US dollar in the first quarter of 2002 and the policy responses to them. Portfolio equity flows have become more volatile and more responsive to global equity market developments. Inflows into local bond markets...

Sudden capital outflows were at the heart of the 1997-98 Asian crisis. Ten years later, capital flows are back on the policy agenda, but in a very different context. The countries of East Asia are now getting more inflows than they can effectively absorb and the upward pressure on exchange rates...

Foreign portfolio flows constitute a key component of economic activity in small open economies such as Colombia. The dynamics of these flows are subject to the influence of both external (push) factors and domestic (pull) factors. Consequently, economic crises and episodes of financial distress...

Meese and Rogoff (1983) and subsequent studies find that economic fundamentals are apparently not able to explain exchange rate movements, but we argue that this so-called "Exchange Rate Disconnect Puzzle" arose because researchers such as Meese and Rogoff (1983) did not use the right...

We examine the relationship between South African Rand and gold price volatility using monthly data for the period 1980-2010. Our main findings is that prior to capital account liberalization the causality runs from South African Rand to gold price volatility but the causality runs the other way...

The main strength of today's international monetary system – its flexibility and adaptability to the different needs of its users – can also become its weakness, as it may contribute to unsustainable growth models and imbalances. The global financial crisis has shown that the system cannot...

Two aspects of global imbalances - undervalued exchange rates and sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) - require a multilateral response. For reasons of inadequate leverage and eroding legitimacy, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has not been effective in dealing with undervalued exchange rates....