The authors examine the empirical links between current account deficits and a broad set of economic variables proposed in the literature. To accomplish this, they complement and extend previous research by using a large, consistent set of macroeconomic data on public and private domestic...

The authors investigate what has motivated the large portfolio flows to several developing countries in recent years. Using monthly data on U.S. capital flows to nine Latin American and nine Asian countries (instead of monthly reserves data), they analyze the behavior of bond and equity flows to...

The remarkable surge in private capital flow to developing countries since 1990 has greatly facilitated their rapid growth, at a time when OECD countries have been in, or passed through, recession. The importance of these flows to the current account of severallarge developing countries has...

Since Egypt's government introduced an economic reform and structural adjustment program in 1991, Egypt's Central Bank has been engaged in massive sterilized interventions to support the fixed nominal exchange rate regime. The result of this process, however, has been an increasing fiscal...

Since 1989, private capital flows to a select group of developing countries have increased sharply, but developments in 1994 have caused concern about the sustainability of those flows. Several highly indebted developing countries that are implementing reform are concerned that a generalized...

An economy's financial integration with the outside world (the extent of capital mobility across its borders) is a key determinant of some of its most important macroeconomic properties. Yet little is known about this characteristic of many developing economies. An important stumbling block in...

Widespread private capital inflows to middle-income countries have surged over the past three years. At the same time, Brady-type debt reduction operations and domestic policy reform took place, indicators of country creditworthiness improved dramatically, and international interest rates...

Most developing countries intervene extensively in financial markets, setting ceilings on interest rates and spreads and allocating much (often between half and all) of formal credit to"priority"uses. This study reviews interest rate controls and other repressive financial policies on investment...

The academic and policy debate about optimal foreign exchange rate regimes for emerging economies, has focused more on the theoretical costs and benefits of possible regimes, than on their actual performance. The authors report on what can be called exchange-rate-regime-dependent differential...

The author provides a selective review of the recent analytical and empirical literature on the benefits and costs of international financial integration. He discusses the impact of financial openness on consumption, investment, and growth, and the impact of foreign bank entry on the domestic...