Using annual data for Colombia over the last thirty years and a new battery of econometric techniques, we test opposing theories that explain macroeconomic fluctuations: The neoclassical synthesis, which posits that, in the presence of temporary price rigidity, an unanticipated monetary...

Sadly, our previous compilation of VoxEU columns, ‘The First Global Financial Crisis of the 21st Century,’ was not the last word on the subject. Since the publication of that volume in June 2008, the global crisis has both deepened and widened. The industrial world has seen the largest bank...

We have now witnessed more than half a decade of relatively heavy capital inflows to a large group of highly heterogeneous developing countries and economies in transition in Asia, Eastern Europe, the Former Soviet Union, Latin America, and parts of Africa and the Middle East--we have also...

The literature on capital controls has (at least) four very serious apples-to-oranges problems: (i) There is no unified theoretical framework to analyze the macroeconomic consequences of controls; (ii) there is significant heterogeneity across countries and time in the control measures...

Since 1990 capital has flowed from industrial countries to developing regions like Latin America, and parts of Asia. Reentry into international capital markets is a welcome turn of events for most countries. However, capital inflows are often associated with inflationary pressures, a real...

Given all the ambiguities about the outcomes of the financial liberalization process, it is relevant to ask what the systematic, cross-country evidence reveals on several questions, including: What happens to key macroeconomic and variables following domestic and external financial...

This paper provides a cross country analysis of surges on capital inflows. Specifically, we examine the broad range of policies that countries have adopted to cope the challenges posed by large and volatile capital flows. We take stock of developments of exchange rate and monetary policy,...

In recent years, many developing countries have intervened in foreign exchange markets to offset to some extent the effect on their economies of large capital flows. Often, changes in reserve requirements were used to mitigate the impact of that intervention on domestic money supplies. Because...

This paper examines the empirical evidence on currency crises and proposes a specific early warning system. This system involves monitoring the evolution of several indicators that tend to exhibit an unusual behavior in the periods preceding a crisis. When an indicator exceeds a certain...

The prospects of expansionary monetary policies in the advanced countries for the foreseeable future have renewed the debate over policy options to cope with large capital inflows that are, at least partly, driven by low interest rates in the financial centers. Historically, capital flow...