Conceptual and Methodological Issues in the Measurement of Capital Flight.

This paper discusses alternative methodologies for measuring capital flight. While methodologies differ in approach, the identities used in balance-of-payments data make them close in the final measurement. The paper also presents capital flight estimates using the various methodologies. For a sample of 58 countries, the data clearly indicate that the various estimates for capital flight are most often quite close in measurement. The data also reveal that the occurrence of capital flight has not been confined to Latin America, but has been a phenomenon of global dimensions, with capital flight evenly distributed across countries relative to their GDP or exports. Copyright @ 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. All rights reserved.