Die Europäische Zentralbank ist bei der Durchführung der gemeinsamen Geldpolitik zwar unabhängig, doch bedürfen einige geld- und währungspolitische Regelungen laut EG-Vertrag der Entscheidung durch den Ministerrat. Wie treffen die für die Ausgestaltung der europäischen Geldpolitik zuständigen Gremien ihre Entscheidungen? Welcher Einfluß ergibt sich hieraus auf die Ausgestaltung der Geldpolitik, der Wechselkurspolitik und der Kapitalverkehrspolitik?
This paper reviews policies taken to address capital flows in Malaysia from 1999 to 2007. In the face of increasingly volatile capital flows and their repercussions on the domestic economy, the monetary authority needs to pursue active monitoring and intervention. Moreover, having a resilient financial sector with prudential regulations may help overcome the negative effects of capital reversal. Other conditions include sound macroeconomic policies, a strong domestic sector, and large international reserves.
How to manage capital inflows remains an important policy issue for many emerging market economies. This paper presents a brief survey of the literature on managing capital inflows, with a focus on developing and emerging market economies. The paper, after discussing the economic characteristics of capital inflows, provides an overview of the evolution of thinking on capital account liberalization, the use of capital controls as an instrument of managing capital inflows, and the effectiveness and limitations of conventional macroeconomic and structural instruments. Although the literature is still evolving, it provides little practical guidance on capital account liberalization. For those countries facing a surge in capital inflows, consensus seems to be that, aside from learning to live with an appreciating (and fluctuating) currency, and strengthening the financial system, there is no effective and sustainable policy measure either to reduce the size of inflows or to prevent the adverse consequence of such inflows. Additional work is especially needed to develop tools to identify and quantify the various risks of capital inflows.
The relatively successful management of cross-border capital flows has enabled the People's Republic of China (PRC) to achieve an extremely high average growth rate of more than 10 percent while keeping inflation under control. The management of cross-border capital flows is an indispensable element of macroeconomic stability. In order to cool down the overheating economy, the PRC government will continue to implement a tight monetary policy. In the face of possible further cuts in US interest rates, the PRC's monetary tightening is becoming increasingly difficult. Hence, the PRC must maintain capital controls whenever possible, and improve its management of cross-border capital flows, to enable the People's Bank of China (PBOC) to implement an independent monetary policy to sustain the economy's growth into the next decade.
The impressive recovery of Asia from the severe 1997-98 financial crisis has been achieved through, among other things, more flexible exchange rates, remarkable reductions of double mismatches in the banking systems, current account surpluses, increasing volumes of foreign direct investment, and accumulations of international reserves. New challenges have now come into view as the Asian economies have to deal with massive capital inflows. This paper aims to explain the overall picture of Thailand as regards the magnitude, types, allocation of capital inflows, impacts of the capital inflows on the financial system-the exchange rate and the interest rate-and impacts on the real sector of the economy. Additionally, a review of existing policies is carried out, together with a presentation of the policy challenges and further policy recommendations.
Die Besteuerung internationaler Devisentransaktionen zur Begrenzung spekulativer Kapitalströme wird gegenwärtig im Rahmen der Globalisierungsdebatte verstärkt diskutiert. Wie wird diese so genannte Tobin-Steuer begründet? Wie könnte eine solche Steuer ausgestaltet werden? Welche Probleme sind mit der Einführung einer Tobin-Steuer verbunden?
Academic thinking on foreign direct investment has evolved over the years. This paper reviews this evolution for its usefulness in understanding EU-Chinese investment relations today. It then explores the idea of a new dynamic policy regime as a more appropriate means to address the complex issues of investment liberalisation rather than the traditional trade liberalisation approach.
This paper describes Indonesia's experiences in managing foreign capital flows after the 1997 financial crisis. It highlights several differences in types and magnitude of capital flows from the pre-crisis period and reviews the determinants of capital flows including government policy and regulatory framework to respond to the influx of capital flows. The paper concludes that the country's policy still focuses on ways to mobilize foreign (and domestic) capital to return in order to finance the resource gap by maintaining macroeconomic stability, improving the investment climate and enhancing prudential supervision of foreign capital flow utilization, particularly by the banking and private sectors.
Die Hauptkritik der Globalisierungsgegner zielt auf die internationalen Finänzmärkte. Welche Bedeutung haben die Finanzmärkte für die Weltwirtschaft? Was wird im einzelnen kritisiert? Ist die Kritik gerechtfertigt?
The recent financial crises in emerging markets have motivated a number of proposed measures that might regulate or provide protection against readily reversible external capital flows. Possible reforms include the adoption of self-protection policies by developing countries that augment traditional macroeconomic and financial sector measures for preventing crises. One set of proposals seek to enhance the liquidity of governments during a crisis, while other proposals seek to reduce exposure to short-term external debt. This paper analyzes some major proposals for self-protection using alternative models of the causes of financial crises in open economies. The effectiveness of liquidity enhancing measures and of capital controls for crisis prevention is shown to depend upon the alleged underlying cause of potential crises. It is also possible that liquidity enhancement could be counterproductive. The economic impact of recent crises on afflicted countries has led some economists to question whether the benefits of capital account liberalization outweigh the costs of exposure to greater volatility in real economic performance. A simple approach for comparing, in simulation, the benefits of capital account openness to the costs of exposure to financial crises is discussed in the first part of the paper.
Resident Fellows Zsolt Darvas and Jakob von Weizsäcker wrote this paper on the pros and cons of a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) following testimony von Weizsäcker gave for the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee of the European Parliament. They argue that a small tax on financial transactions is justifiable in order to limit socially undesirable transactions.
From the early 1990s, India embarked on easing capital controls. Liberalization emphasized openness towards equity flows, both FDI and portfolio flows. In particular, there are few barriers in the face of portfolio equity flows. In recent years, a massive increase in the value of foreign ownership of Indian equities has come about, largely reflecting improvements in the size, liquidity and corporate governance of Indian firms. While the system of capital controls appears formidable, the de facto openness on the ground is greater than is apparent, particularly because of the substantial enlargement of the current account. These changes to capital account openness were not accompanied by commensurate monetary policy reform. The monetary policy regime has consisted essentially of a pegged exchange rate to the US dollar throughout. Increasing openness on the capital account, coupled with exchange rate pegging, has led to a substantial loss of monetary policy autonomy. The logical way forward now consists of bringing the de jure capital controls up-to-date with the de facto convertibility, and embarking on reforms of the monetary policy framework so as to shift the focus of monetary policy away from the exchange rate to domestic inflation.
This paper surveys the nature of capital inflows into Asia since the peak of the US dollar in the first quarter of 2002 and the policy responses to them. Portfolio equity flows have become more volatile and more responsive to global equity market developments. Inflows into local bond markets have become important, although they are often immeasurable, virtual investments through derivative instruments. In the market that shows the highest level of direct non-resident holdings, namely that of Indonesia, these seem quite sensitive to global equity volatility. The most important qualitative change over this period involved bank flows. In particular, foreign bank flows have returned to net inflows after five years of paydown after the 1997-98 financial crisis. Carry trades, although difficult to measure, appear to have become important, with notable growth in transactions in which a long position in one regional currency is taken against a short position in another one. Carry trades also show great sensitivity to global equity volatility. In the face of such increasingly volatile capital inflows, the authorities in the region have adopted both measures to encourage outflows and to discourage inflows. Outside of Korea, measures to encourage outflows have met with limited response owing to expectations of further strength in the domestic currency and, until recently, buoyant domestic equity markets. Some of the measures to discourage inflows have taken the form of making previous measures to discourage outflows more symmetric, while others have taken the form of reinstating much reduced or eliminated restrictions, while other have taken the form of new adaptations. These limits on capital inflows can be quite effective, but they set back the development of financial markets and clash with ambitions for internationalized currencies in the region.
During the past five years or so, most East Asian economies including the Philippines experienced a rising level of foreign exchange reserves and rapidly appreciating currencies both in nominal and real terms. One cause has been the resurgence of capital flows, which makes the issue of how to manage them relevant. However, the experience with regard to capital flows among East Asian economies is mixed and the level of capital flows to the region is proportionally less than that prior to the 1997 crisis. Another reason is the rise in current account surpluses. The Philippines has experienced both a return of capital inflows and a more favorable current account balance, with the latter largely due to remittances from overseas workers. However, like many other regional currencies, the appreciation of the peso is not commensurate to movements of the BOP accounts. Currencies in the region are reacting primarily to the general weakness of the US dollar, and global uncertainties have contributed to weak investment which in turn is another major reason behind the current account surplus of several economies including the Philippines. Policy measures at the domestic level can focus on reviving private investment, particularly channeling overseas remittances to more productive investment. Meanwhile, East Asian financial and monetary cooperation can also result in a unified front aimed at overhauling the unipolar global financial system.
Expecting an appreciation of the Chinese currency seems to be a safe bet. There is a mounting pressure from U.S. representatives, and a majority of economists seem to believe that the Chinese economy is overheating and that the dollar peg should be loosened as soon as possible. Indeed, a nominal appreciation may help reduce reserve inflows and allow for a more autonomous monetary policy in the case of overheating. A plausible strategy would be a small one-step revaluation, which would bring the renminbi to parity with the Hong Kong dollar. However, such an adjustment may provoke additional speculative capital inflows and is not even necessary to bring about the real appreciation. Overheating should lead to an increase in domestic inflation rates above the U.S. level, which – given the fixed nominal exchange rate – delivers the real appreciation. There are certain signs that the Chinese economy is not characterized by overheating but rather by overinvestment. Indications for overinvestment are the strong expansion of investment above 40 percent of GDP, the increase in real estate prices in high-growth regions, and the lack of a strong increase in consumer prices. In that case, the present restrictive policy mix of the Chinese authorities is preserving the situation of excess supply and undervaluation. A nominal appreciation would even increase the internal imbalance, as claimed by Chinese authorities. Whereas the diagnosis is controversial with respect to overheating versus overinvestment, undervaluation can be taken as a stylized fact. Hence, short-run adjustment could be achieved by less restrictive monetary and fiscal policies conditional on the development of the consumer price inflation which should be allowed to show a positive differential versus the U.S. consumer price inflation. Apart from such short-run consideration, the more general question is how to sequence the shift to a flexible exchange rate regime, which seems to be adequate for a large country like China. On the one hand, it is plausible that China should learn to float while the capital account is relatively closed. On the other hand, both opening up the capital account and introducing exchange rate flexibility need a certain degree of capital market development. Additionally, one-side bets on the direction of exchange rate movements when giving up a peg should be avoided. Both preconditions are currently not given in the case of China. The priorities for balancing short-run adjustment and long-run optimality are (1) a real appreciation via higher consumer price inflation and (2) speeding up domestic capital market reform as long as capital controls are effective to some extent. This should allow phasing in an augmented inflation targeting regime and avoiding a hard landing, which otherwise may be the consequence of lifting a solid exchange rate anchor in stormy waters.
