A nova abordagem do FMI sobre a gestão dos fluxos de capitais e suas limitações: Lições do Brasil e da Coreia do Sul

As emerging economies experience a boom in capital inflows after the global financial crisis, governments were increasingly concerned about the downsides of these inflows. Even the IMF (International Monetary Fund), long a stalwart proponent of financial liberalization, has engaged in a new debate on capital flow management. Drawing lessons from empirical case studies on Brazil and South Korea, this paper finds that the new IMF framework remains insufficient in two main aspects. First, by defining "capital flow management measures" (CFMs) as a temporary instrument embedded in an overall strategy of financial opening, the organization insists in the general advantages of financial liberalization, which poses serious limits to emerging economies' policy space. Second, the Fund insists in in a separation of prudential financial regulation, which should be permanent, and only temporary CFMs. Yet, the case studies of Brazil and Korea presented in this paper show that especially for emerging markets with rather diversified domestic financial markets, both types of measures are interdependent and overlapping. Additionally, we demonstrate in our case studies the relevance of a third type of regulation, lying on foreign exchange (FX) derivatives instruments, which may also be required to effectively manage foreign investors' portfolio reallocations and their impact.