While new conventional wisdom warns that developing countries should be aware of the risks of premature capital account liberalization, the costs of not removing exchange controls have received much less attention. This paper investigates the negative effects of exchange controls on trade. To...

Three things happen when emerging economies open their stock markets to foreign investors. First, the aggregate dividend yield falls by 240 basis points. Second, the growth rate of the capital stock increases by an average of 1.1 percentage points per year. Third, the growth rate of output per...

By adopting an identification strategy of difference-in-difference estimation combined with propensity score matching between liberalized and closed countries, this paper provides robust evidence that opening the capital account is associated with an increase in income inequality in developing...

The decade of the 1990s witnessed currency crises in all parts of the world - in Europe in 1992/2, in Latin America in 1994/5, in Asia in 1997/8 and in Russia and Brazil in 1998. The large economic costs resulting from the severe depreciation of the currencies in various episodes and general...

While new conventional wisdom warns that developing countries should be aware of the risks of premature capital account liberalization, the costs of not removing exchange controls have received much less attention. This paper investigates the negative effects of exchange controls on trade. To...

Drawing on evidence from a sample of emerging market economies over the period 1990-2004, this evaluation report reviews the IMF’s approach to capital account liberalization and related issues. The evaluation seeks to contribute to transparency by documenting what in practice has been the...