Capital flows, capital control and exchange rate regimes

1989

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2011

Public Finance Quarterly, 2011

Journal of Development Economics, 1987

International Review of Applied Economics

First, we examine the nature of capital controls and their impact on selected countries. We provide a critique of IMF policy and an examination of its results in practice. We then show how the warning signs of the 1970s were ignored and the consequences became apparent during the ensuing period of neoliberal hegemony. We present a summary of the neo-classical arguments concerning the role of increased capital mobility in promoting growth and development. Our objectives are first, to show that, in practice, it may be that promoting increased capital mobility is counterproductive as it reduces macroeconomic 'policy space' and restricts the state's ability to use fiscal and monetary policy to enhance welfare. Second, we introduce and use a development of the international policy 'trilemma' in the form of a variant of the idea of the 'quadrilemma' 1 in order to underpin our policy suggestions. We suggest that, in most cases, the key policy driver in the promotion of economic growth is fiscal policy but it may be that its unconstrained use (and that of monetary policy) is not possible either under fixed exchange rates or when free capital mobility exists; in fact, a nation may face a 'demiquadrilemma. We contend that, in practice, a country can only adopt 'two from four'; if it chooses to retain free use of monetary and fiscal policy it must sacrifice both fixed exchange rates and capital mobility. We hope to demonstrate that a nation facing the 'demi-quadrilemma' should discard both the use of fixed exchange rates and the acceptance of free capital mobility in order to allow the retention of requisite monetary and fiscal policy space and that a multinational approach to the design of capital control policy would be an effective contributor to a strategy designed to enhance growth and development.

2001

1999

2012

Review of International Economics, 2001

This introduction to a special edition of Review of International Economics summarizes a collection of articles that originated in a conference on "Is Globalization of Capital Markets a Boost or a Hindrance to Development?" that was sponsored by the Program in Economic Policy Management (PEPM) at Columbia University during 16-17 April 1999.