Why Did Financial Globalization not Deliver the Goods?

'Cause let's face it, it didn't.  It didn't boost investment and growth in emerging market economies; it led to increased volatility; and it played an important supporting role in the current subprime mortgage mess.

I have a new paper with Arvind Subramanian which scrutinizes the reasons.  From the introduction:

What these findings reveal are the shortcomings of the mental model that dominated thinking about capital flows a decade ago. This model had two key premises. First, it presumed that low savings and weak financial markets at home were first-order constraints on economic growth and development. Thus greater access to investible funds from abroad and improved financial intermediation would provide a powerful boost to domestic investment and growth along with better consumption smoothing. Second, while it recognized the potential of adverse interactions between lenders’ incentives abroad and borrowers’ incentives at home, it assumed that sufficiently vigilant prudential regulation and supervision could ameliorate the attendant risks sufficiently. Indeed, given the presumed importance of access to international finance, this model required that policy makers give very high priority to the implementation of appropriate regulatory structures.

In brief, the argument was this: (1) Developing nations need foreign capital to grow. (2) But foreign capital can be risky if they do not pursue prudent macroeconomic policies and appropriate prudential regulation. (3) So developing countries must become ever more vigilant on those fronts as they open themselves up to capital flows. This syllogism remains at the core of the case for financial globalization (e.g. Mishkin 2006), even though, as we shall see, some newer arguments have begun to take a different tack (e.g. Kose, Prasad, Rogoff, and Wei). But the syllogism relies heavily on a premise that is by no means self-evident. Certainly the results of Prasad, Rajan, and Subramanian (2007) and Gourinchas and Jeanne (2007) are at variance with the presupposition that poor nations need foreign finance in order to develop.

To make sense of what is going on, we need a different mental model. We must begin by taking note of the fact that developing countries live in a second-best world, which means that they suffer from multiple distortions and constraints. While some nations may be severely constrained by inadequate access to finance, others—and perhaps a majority—are constrained primarily by inadequate investment demand, due either to low social returns or to low private appropriability. As we shall argue below, targeting the external finance problem when the “binding constraint” lies with investment demand can be not only ineffective, it can actually backfire. In particular, capital inflows exacerbate the investment constraint through the real exchange rate channel: the increase in the real exchange rate which accompanies capital inflows reduces the real profitability of investment in tradables and lowers the private sector’s willingness to invest. The result is that while capital inflows definitely boost consumption, their effect on investment and growth is indeterminate, and could even be negative. The flat investment profile that most emerging market economies have seen since the early 1990s—compared to their experience prior to financial globalization—can be understood in these terms. The exceptions are countries such as China, India, or Chile that have managed to prevent real exchange rate appreciation for a sustained period of time thanks in part to their reliance on capital controls.

Furthermore, government capacities are limited. Priorities have to be selected carefully since not all distortions can be removed simultaneously. The emphasis on strengthening financial regulation and governance, demanding as it is even in advanced countries, is particularly challenging in countries that are struggling with problems of underdevelopment. Confronting this challenge, and paying up the implied opportunity costs, makes a lot of sense if what one gets in exchange is a big boost in growth, as would be the case when the binding constraint on growth is access to external finance. But otherwise, exhortations on prudential regulation serve little purpose other than reveal the professional limitation of every specialist: insistence that the government undertake all the complementary reforms that would ensure the success of the specialist’s policy recommendation, and indifference to the trade-offs that might arise from the needs of more urgent reforms elsewhere. (Footnotes omitted)

The paper does two things.  First, it evaluates and critiques the latest generation of work in favor of financial globalization--mainly the writings of Rick Mishkin, Peter Henry, and Kose, Prasad. Rogoff, and Wei.  Second, it argues that we need to understand the difference between saving- and investment-constrained economies in order to make sense of financial globalization.  In investment-constrained economies--where investment is low not because of poor access to credit but because of low perceived return--capital inflows are at best ineffective, at worst harmful. 

The paper will be eventually published in the IMF Staff Papers, the house organ of that hotbed of radical economists...

Comments

[robertdfeinman]

This seems to mesh well with your book (I'm up to chapter 5). But I suggest taking a look at non-economic considerations.

The most important of these is to determine who benefits from policies which don't achieve their stated aims. For example, Easterly criticizes the IMF and WB for being organizations which are more concerned with protecting themselves and enhancing the careers of the employees, then of producing optimum results. Part of this (according to him) is because staff is (was?) evaluated by how much money they give away rather than how well projects worked.

It certainly seems that many in developing countries consider the IMF as the tool of American banks who are looking for investment opportunities that have higher yields than those within the US. A history of sending in the Marines when US interests were threatened adds to this outlook.

Is the academic development community being unwittingly co-opted, by neo-colonialists who are happy to to cite ambiguous or unsubstantiated studies when they support their efforts?

Do development ideologues ignore data which contradicts their axioms? This is certainly true of the trickle-down and libertarian schools of thought who dominate much of US fiscal policy these days.

When people hold on to beliefs which are at variance to reality, their motivations become relevant.

[Justin Rietz]

I have started reading the paper, and so far it is quite interesting.

I have a favor to ask - before you move on to another topic, would you give us some time to read and digest the paper so that we can make (atleast partially) intelligent comments?

[gordon]

Then there is the corruption problem, considerably exacerbated by globalisation as this paper (Baker, Raymond W. and Nordin, Jennifer (2007) "Dirty Money: What the Underworld Understands that Economists Do Not," The Economists' Voice: Vol. 4 : Iss. 1, Article 4.) explains. I would have put in a hotlink but apparently that's not possible here.

[Justin Rietz]

Gordon -

I may have missed it, but I didn't see where this paper mentioned that globalization increases the amount of dirty money.

In any case, given that a huge portion of dirty money is due to government corruption, and that anyone with large amounts of dirty money can surely buy off the government and therefore avoid capital controls, I would argue that globalization does not significantly contribute to the problem.

[Justin Rietz]

Dani -

Before I post my comments on the paper, I wanted to clarify whether the conclusion of the paper is that in all developing countries, foreign investment is a net negative due to the impact on the real exchange rate, or only in countries that are investment constrained?

Thanks.

[gordon]

Justin Reitz, there is indeed no mention of the word "globalization" in the article I referenced. However the ease with which foreign transactions are now made and the enormous amounts of money involved are parts of the globalization phenomenon and I have no doubt that illegal money movement is part of the price we pay. Underdeveloped countries in particular pay more than their share; from the previously referenced article: "Despite the impact of trillions of dollars of
dirty money flowing out of poorer countries, we
are still at step one: measuring it. While our figures
are order-of-magnitude estimates, there is
surprisingly little analysis of the problem among
economists. The whole of the financial equation
for development—total capital in, total capital
out, what’s left over—has never been put on the
table".

[Geoff]

A number of times throughout this paper, I said to myself "finally, an economist the mainstream listens to that gets financial globalization!" This paper makes the broad point that heterodox economists like Alice Amsden, Ha-Joon Chang, and Erik Reinert have been making for a while: capital account liberalization is useless if there is nothing worth investing in. One of the most important aspects of economic development is innovation: countries get rich by exporting high value-added goods that are subject to increasing returns, and the way to produce this is through education of skilled workers, investment in R&D and critical infrastructure, and large-scale investment in tradable sectors (even supposedly "non-natural" ones). Foreign financing of development accomplishes none of these goals, as foreign investors prefer to put their money in real assets and short-term projects, rather than the type of long-term sustained investment that actually produces economic growth. South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan were only able to take off when mid- and high-tech industries began to emerge, largely as a result of (gasp!) industrial policy. That being said, at later stages of development (i.e. once there are established industries worth investing in) financial liberalization does positively impact economic growth. Furthermore, there are a lot of cases of industrial policy that did not work; however, this does not mean that industrial policy will never work. The way some people talk about the state's role in development (that it is always and everywhere a bad thing), you would imagine them calling Alexander Hamilton a socialist for being a proponent of infant industry protection and other non-orthodox ideas.

[Justin Rietz]

Dani -

I enjoyed reading your paper, especially as it addresses some of the questions I have had regarding your position on capital controls. I found the theoretical aspect particular interesting, i.e. savings constrained versus demand constrained developing nations. Intuitively, it makes sense - if there are no investment projects to be had, additional savings (via foreign capital) will not help growth, but instead will drive up the value of the domestic currency and thus negatively impact demand for tradables and hence growth.

After reflecting on this model, though, several questions arose to me. Why is there an influx of foreign capital if there are no investment projects? If there are no projects in which to invest, or very few, returns on initial foreign investments would be low and inflows of additional foreign investments would quickly dry up. The initial appreciation of the currency would further hamper foreign investment, so what we would expect to see after removing capital controls in an investment-constrained economy is an initial increase in foreign capital inflows, an upwards movement in the currency, with a subsequent drop and leveling off of both.

On the flip side of this, the removal of capital controls would also allow citizens to move savings offshore, with the initial appreciation in the local currency (due to capital inflows) being an additional incentive to do so. However, this capital outflow will push downwards on the exchange rate, and if the net result is a capital outflow, there will be a depreciation of the currency, which as the paper states increases the demand for tradables.

There is also what I consider to be a “timing” issue. A government may use capital controls to effectively hold down the real exchange rate and boost tradables. However, this increase in tradables will push upwards on the exchange rate. The government then has to take further action to maintain a lower real exchange rate. This seems to be a bit of a game of chicken: will the positive effects of economic growth from increased demand for tradables outpace the potential dangers of inflation? At what point in time does the government release or ease capital controls, and are they sophisticated enough to know? (a point brought up several times in the paper is the limitations of a developing nation government’s capabilities to manage economic policy)? I suspect China may well be a real-time example of this.

I don't agree with the reasoning behind the use of the U.S. interest rate as a proxy for the strength of capital inflows. In a free market, interest rates go up during boom times as the demand for capital increases, and decrease as economic activity slows down or drops. However, this has not been the case in the U.S. due to intervention by the Federal Reserve. The dot com boom and current sub prime crises are examples of this. During such times, the search for better investment returns overseas is offset by investment opportunities in the U.S. perceived to offer a better return.

Another exogenous fact that may be at play is that the ability to invest internationally increased in the 80's and 90's, both due to the opening up of foreign markets and due to the creation of a large number of mutual funds that allowed investors to indirectly invest in these markets. Hence, though interest rates in the U.S. may have been high, there may also have been pent up demand to invest internationally that was released. I don't have the numbers right now to prove or disprove this, but it may be interesting to look at.

On page three, the paper attacks specialists who ignore the costs or tradeoffs of their favored policy positions, and then footnotes a quote by Larry Summers comparing such specialists to “trade economists who know that the losers from trade surges need to be protected but regard this as not a problem for trade policy”. Yet the paper fails to fully address the impact of those who suffer from a stronger currency, and does not address those who manage to save money but then may not protect those savings during time of turmoil by moving money overseas.

The paper several times uses the Mexican peso crisis, the Argentinean crash, and the Asian currency crisis as examples of the risks of FG. However, in all instances, the crises were triggered by governments attempting to control exchange rates. Had they not, their currencies would have started depreciating earlier and over a longer period of time, thus avoiding the “big drop” that triggered the crises with its massive capital outflows. Moreover, an earlier and more gradual depreciation in the domestic currency would have increased the demand for the country's tradables earlier, which would have helped growth and pushed upwards on the exchange rate. Hence, I don’t believe any of these crises support the idea that financial globalization doesn’t work or is extremely risky, but rather that governments via economic policies aren’t very good at it. If that is the paper’s argument, I don’t disagree.

Obviously, and unfortunately, I have not made counter arguments to the data findings - the downside of being a blog commentator is that you don’t always have the time to do in-depth data analysis. Thoughts I have: Perhaps in faster growing developing nations, the growth of foreign investment can't keep up with the growth in GDP, and therefore drops on a percentage basis. Maybe portfolio rebalancing is an issue - the redistribution of funds from investments that have done well to those that haven’t (a common investment methodology). Or a slight take off on this - maybe investments are targeted towards countries that have not yet experienced significant growth in hopes of being in on the next big thing. I think it would also be interesting to look at aid as a % of GDP and see if there is any relevant relationship with GDP growth and / or foreign investment levels.

[Per Kurowski]

Dani Rodrik is wearing blinders

I have been one of those who have most spoken out in favor of levees or speed bumps to reduce the negative impact that the massive international flows of funds with its many volatile changes of hearts and minds can have on small economies. In this respect I would not seem to be the typical candidate to argue against a paper produced by Dani Rodrik and Arvir Subramanian titled “Why did financial globalization disappoint?” Nonetheless, I must, since the paper misses out on what I consider to be one of the most important dimensions of the issue. Let me try to explain it very briefly.

The financial globalization that is referred to in the paper occurred almost simultaneously with the introduction of a completely new set of banking regulations, known as Basel I; and that, by means of the minimum capital requirements for the banks, introduced globally a regulatory mandated adverseness against “default” risks; as this risk happened to be defined and measured by the credit rating agencies empowered by the regulators to perform the risk surveillance.

That in practice meant that even while flows were freed to flow, the regulators set up a lot of up traffic signs that alerted the market about known and unknown risks while simultaneously sending the subliminal message that these risks could indeed be measured; and the market responded to these signs …often erroneously, obviously. That a German bank goes under because of “risk free” investments in the subprime mortgages in the USA is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to showing how these financial traffic signs proved to be very confusing to the markets. Unless we take due consideration of these risk signaling effects any analysis of the financial globalization will be incomplete.

My second argument, much related to the previous, has to do with the whole concept of risk and development. Though the paper rightly puts forward the notion that developing countries live in a second-best world, meaning multiple distortions and constraints, it still treats risk the same no matter where, even though we know that in fact risk could also be considered as the oxygen of development. The paper refers to “capital flows can create all sorts of mischief when financial institutions take excessive risks” true, but ignores the possibility of these institutions taking insufficient risks, which is somehow what I argue has happened as a result of Basle I. (Frequently references are made to Basle II as being problematic but in fact it is Basel I where the original sins could be found)

Finally once again we encounter a reference to El Salvador in a Rodrik paper, and we have to conclude that even though he sees the tree of the remittances, he does not yet see the forest. All people in El Salvador with any type of initiative have simply decided not to grow in El Salvador but to take their growth to the USA. In fact, looking at how successful they have been doing just that and that they outside of El Salvador earn much more than the whole GDP of El Salvador, we can deduct that El Salvador, as a nation, has been growing faster than China; and this has of course absolutely nothing to do with financial globalization.

http://www.subprimeregulations.blogspot.com/