This discussion was prepared for the 84th Meeting of the Carnegie-Rochester-NYU Conference Series on Public Policy "Monetary Policy: An Unprecedented Predicament" held on November 14-15, 2014, at Carnegie Mellon University.

Two striking facts about international capital flows in emerging economies motivate this paper: (1) Governments hold large amounts of international reserves, for which they obtain a return lower than their borrowing cost. (2) Purchases of domestic assets by nonresidents and purchases of foreign...