Fernando A. Broner

Gross capital flows: dynamics and crises

This paper analyzes the joint behavior of international capital flows by foreign and domestic agents -- gross capital flows -- over the business cycle and during financial crises. The authors show that gross capital flows are very large and volatile, especially relative to net capital flows. When foreigners invest in a country, domestic agents tend to invest abroad, and vice versa. Gross capital flows are also pro-cyclical, with foreigners investing more in the country and domestic agents investing more abroad during expansions. During crises, especially during severe ones, there is retrenchment, that is, a reduction in both capital inflows by foreigners and capital outflows by domestic agents. This evidence sheds light on the nature of shocks driving capital flows and helps discriminate among existing theories. The findings seem consistent with shocks that affect foreign and domestic agents asymmetrically, such as sovereign risk and asymmetric information.

Rethinking the Effects of Financial Liberalization

During the last few decades, many emerging markets have lifted restrictions on cross-border financial transactions. The conventional view was that this would allow these countries to: (i) receive capital inflows from advanced countries that would finance higher investment and growth; (ii) insure against aggregate shocks and reduce consumption volatility; and (iii) accelerate the development of domestic financial markets and achieve a more efficient domestic allocation of capital and better sharing of individual risks. However, the evidence suggests that this conventional view was wrong. In this paper, we present a simple model that can account for the observed effects of financial liberalization. The model emphasizes the role of imperfect enforcement of domestic debts and the interactions between domestic and international financial transactions. In the model, financial liberalization might lead to different outcomes: (i) domestic capital flight and ambiguous effects on net capital flows, investment, and growth; (ii) large capital inflows and higher investment and growth; or (iii) volatile capital flows and unstable domestic financial markets. The model shows how these outcomes depend on the level of development, the depth of domestic financial markets, and the quality of institutions

Why are Capital Flows so much more Volatile in Emerging than in Developed Countries

The standard deviations of capital flows to emerging countries are 80 percent higher than those to developed countries. First, we show that very little of this difference can be explained by more volatile fundamentals or by higher sensitivity to fundamentals. Second, we show that most of the difference in volatility can be accounted for by three characteristics of capital flows: (i) capital flows to emerging countries are more subject to occasional large negative shocks (“crises”) than those to developed countries, (ii) shocks are subject to contagion, and (iii) – the most important one – shocks to capital flows to emerging countries are more persistent than those to developed countries. Finally, we study a number of country characteristics to determine which are most associated with capital flow volatility. Our results suggest that underdevelopment of domestic financial markets, weak institutions, and low income per capita, are all associated with capital flow volatility.

Discrete devaluations and multiple equilibria in a first generation model of currency crises

The first generation models of currency crises have often been criticized because they predict that, in the absence of very large triggering shocks, currency attacks should be predictable and lead to small devaluations. This paper shows that these features of first generation models are not robust to the inclusion of private information. In particular, this paper analyzes a generalization of the Krugman-Flood-Garber (KFG) model, which relaxes the assumption that all consumers are perfectly informed about the level of fundamentals. In this environment, the KFG equilibrium of zero devaluation is only one of many possible equilibria. In all the other equilibria, the lack of perfect information delays the attack on the currency past the point at which the shadow exchange rate equals the peg, giving rise to unpredictable and discrete devaluations.

Fiscal Multipliers and Foreign Holdings of Public Debt

This paper explores a natural connection between fiscal multipliers and foreign holdings of public debt. Although fiscal expansions can raise domestic economic activity through various channels, they can also have crowding-out effects if the resources used to acquire public debt reduce domestic consumption and investment. These crowding-out effects are likely to be weaker when governments have access to foreign markets to place their debt, increasing the size of multipliers. We test this hypothesis on (i) post-war US data and (ii) data for a panel of 17 advanced economies from the 1980s to the present. To do so, we assemble a novel database of public debt holdings by domestic and foreign creditors for a large set of advanced economies. We combine this data with standard measures of fiscal policy shocks and show that, indeed, the size of fiscal multipliers is increasing in the share of public debt held by foreigners. In particular, the fiscal multiplier is smaller than one when the foreign share is low, such as in the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s and Japan today, and larger than one when the foreign share is high, such as in the U.S. and Ireland today. JEL Classification: E62, F32, F34, F36, F41, F62, F65, G15, H63

Sovereign Risk, Anonymous Markets, and the Effects of Globalization

The goal of this paper is to study the effects of globalization on the workings of asset markets and welfare. To do this, we adopt a technological view of the globalization process. That is, we model this process as consisting of a gradual (and exogenous) reduction in the costs of shipping goods across different regions of the world. In the absence of market frictions, globalization creates foreign trade opportunities without affecting domestic ones and, as a result, unambiguously raises welfare. In the presence of sovereign risk, however, globalization can either create or destroy both domestic and foreign trade opportunities. The net effect on welfare of this process of creation and destruction of trade opportunities might be either positive or negative. We also find that asset bubbles moderate this welfare effect. When globalization is welfare reducing, asset bubbles grow creating a positive wealth effect, and vice versa. This might come at a cost though. Asset bubbles reduce the incentives to implement reforms aimed at reducing sovereign risk.