Purpose - This paper aims to discuss the main characteristics of the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region's capital inflows volatility. It also examines the effect of institutional quality and information availability on capital inflows volatility in selected MENA countries (Bahrain, Egypt,...

Discussions about international capital movements raise extremely important and controversial questions. Why should countries open up their capital accounts, especially considering that unrestricted international capital movement is a relatively new phenomenon? For example, many OECD countries...

The current account in developed countries is highly persistent and volatile in comparison to output growth. The standard intertemporal current account model with rational expectations (RE) fails to account for the observed current account dynamics together with persistent changes in...

Since the study of Feldstein/Horioka (1980), the high correlation between investment and saving rates is a controversial, but first of all often confirmed empirical evidence. In this paper, this correlation is investigated once again for the EU-countries in the time period from 1960 to 1997. In...

With rising financial integration, the magnitude and swings in capital flows have increased in the past two decades, intensifying the policy debate on how best to deal with these flows. This paper assesses the use and effectiveness of capital controls in limiting inflow surges. Using a novel...

The present paper examines the degree of comovement of gross capital inflows, which is a highly sensitive issue for policy makers. We estimate a dynamic hierarchical factor model that is able to decompose inflows in a sample of 47 economies into (i) a global factor common to all types of flows...

This paper deals with two related issues: the sustainability of China's exchange rate regime and the opening up of its capital account. The exchange rate discussion deliberately passes over the issue of the quot;equilibriumquot; value of the renminbi and its alleged undervaluation - typically at...

This paper discusses the experience of the EU`s eight new member countries (EU8) between 1995 and 2003 when the bulk of capital account liberalization took place, focusing on interest-rate-sensitive portfolio flows and financial flows. It takes stock of the lessons from capital flow patterns to...

I study the determinants of capital flows to Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, assessing the relative importance of domestic and global factors. I estimate six VECM models, one for each Latin American country plus the Euro Area, Japan, and USA, and then embed them in a multi-country Global VAR. The...

We analyze the second-moment properties of the components of international capital flows and their relationship to business cycle variables (output, investment, and real interest rate) in 22 industrial and emerging countries. Total inward flows are procyclical with respect to all three macro...