This paper reexamines the issue of international financial capital mobility, which is today's economic orthodoxy. Discussion is often framed in terms of the impossible trinity. That framing distorts discussion by representing capital mobility as having equal significance with sovereign monetary...

Though the renminbi is not yet convertible, the international monetary regime has already started to move towards a 'multipolar' system, with the dollar, the Chinese currency and the euro as its key likely pillars. This shift corresponds to the long-term evolution of the balance of economic...

Capital controls and exchange restrictions are used to restrict international capital flows during economic crises. This paper looks at the legal implications of these restrictions and explores the current international regulatory framework applicable to international capital movements and...

The level of capital flows to developing countries had increased dramatically over the decade prior to the 1997 Asian financial crisis. In terms of composition, private capital flows dominated official flows beginning in 1992. The surge in private capital flows to emerging market economies was a...

This paper analyzes the short-term effects of foreign capital flows on aggregate demand in Mexico: their magnitude, transmission channels, and the possible influence of the country’s choice of exchange rate regime. The study is motivated by the introduction of a floating system in December...

This paper studies the short-run transmission of foreign shocks in a small open economy with capital controls and a fixed exchange rate. Capital controls alter the transmission of shocks because endogenous changes in the domestic nominal interest rate affect savings and investment decisions. The...

Cross-country regressions suggest little connection from foreign capital inflows to more rapid economic growth for developing countries and emerging markets. This suggests that the lack of domestic savings is not the primary constraint on growth in these economies, as implicitly assumed in the...

The paper analyzes the relation between institutional quality, such as corruption, in a country and its monetary regime. It is shown that a credibly fixed exchange rate to a low inflation country, like a currency board, can reduce corruption and improve the fiscal system. A monetary union,...

The paper explores the interaction between debt crises and devaluation. Since the optimal level of devaluation in a crisis depends on the level of debt that has to be serviced, a default makes a devaluation less likely. Expected devaluation depends thus on expectations about default which is...