Capital Controls And Trade Liberalization In A Monetary Economy

This paper reexamines Aizenman’s (1985) results on the effects of capital controls during unanticipated trade liberalization using an intertemporal optimizing monetary model. Unlike in Aizenman’s model, which is based on the currency substitution model, foreign money is an interest-bearing asset in this paper, and its major role is to smooth intertemporal consumption. With this modification, Aizenman’s results are reversed, thus showing that the effects of capital controls during trade liberalization would vary greatly depending on the role of foreign money in a country. The effects of an anticipated trade liberalization are also studied.

After the industrial countries established current account convertibility in the late1950s, they began to phase out their capital controls. Their efforts were slow and tentative at first, but built up considerable momentum by the 1980s as market-oriented economic policies gained popularity. This paper describes how national policymakers’ views of capital controls shifted over time, and how these controls have been closely related to regulation in other policy areas, such as banking and financial markets. As developing countries seek to liberalize their capital accounts to obtain the benefits of increased integration with the global economy, what lessons can be drawn from industrial countries’ diverse experiences with capital controls, and how can a country’s liberalization measures be sequenced to minimize disturbances to its exchange rate and monetary policies?

The essays collected in this volume discuss the impact of increased capital mobility on macroeconomic performance.

This paper reviews the experience with capital controls in industrial and developing countries, considers the policy issues raised when the effectiveness of capital controls diminishes, examines the medium-term benefits and costs of an open capital account, and analyzes the policy measures that could help sustain capital account convertibility. As the effectiveness of capital controls eroded more rapidly in the 1980s than in earlier periods, new constraints were placed on the formulation of stabilization and structural reform programs. However, experience suggests that certain macroeconomic, financial, and risk management policies would allow countries to attain the benefits of capital account convertibility and reduce the financial risks created by an open capital account.

This paper considers the effect of exchange and capital controls on trade in the gravity-equation framework, in which bilateral exports depend on the distance between countries, the countries’ size and wealth, tariff barriers, and exchange and capital controls. The extent of exchange and capital controls is measured by unique indices. In view of the degree to which countries have liberalized their exchange systems, controls on current payments and transfers are found to be a minor impediment to trade, while capital controls significantly reduce exports into developing and transition economies. Thus, further capital account liberalization could significantly foster trade.

This paper examines country experiences with the use and liberalization of capital controls to develop a deeper understanding of the role of capital controls in coping with volatile capital flows, as well as the issues surrounding their liberalization. Detailed analyses of country cases aim to shed light on the motivations to limit capital flows; the role the controls may have played in coping with particular situations, including in financial crises and in limiting short-term inflows; the nature and design of the controls; and their effectivenes and potential costs. The paper also examines the link between prudential policies and capital controls and illstrates the ways in which better prudential practices and accelerated financial reforms could address the risks in cross-border capital transactions.

This paper investigates why controls on capital inflows have a bad name, and evoke such visceral opposition, by tracing how capital controls have been used and perceived, since the late nineteenth century. While advanced countries often employed capital controls to tame speculative inflows during the last century, we conjecture that several factors undermined their subsequent use as prudential tools. First, it appears that inflow controls became inextricably linked with outflow controls. The latter have typically been more pervasive, more stringent, and more linked to autocratic regimes, failed macroeconomic policies, and financial crisis—inflow controls are thus damned by this “guilt by association.” Second, capital account restrictions often tend to be associated with current account restrictions. As countries aspired to achieve greater trade integration, capital controls came to be viewed as incompatible with free trade. Third, as policy activism of the 1970s gave way to the free market ideology of the 1980s and 1990s, the use of capital controls, even on inflows and for prudential purposes, fell into disrepute.