Sticky capital controls

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Acosta-Henao, Miguel; Alfaro, Laura; Fernandez, Andres
• 署名单位: Central Bank of Chile; Harvard University; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; National Bureau of Economic Research; Inter-American Development Bank; International Monetary Fund
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-1996
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2025.104104
• 发表日期: 2025
• 关键词: Capital controls; Macroprudential policies; stickiness; Intensive margin; (S; s) costs

摘要

With a new quarterly dataset on the intensive margin of priced-based capital controls, complemented with extensive measures (restrictions, prohibitions, and authorizations) constructed using text analysis, we document that capital controls are sticky. Changes to price-based controls do not occur frequently; and when they do, they display high autocorrelation. Extensive measures also show considerable persistence. We then augment a model of capital controls relying on pecuniary externalities with an (S, s) cost of implementing such policies, and illustrate how this friction goes a long way toward bringing the model closer to the data. When the extended model is calibrated to the countries in the new dataset, we find that the size of these costs is large, substantially reducing the welfare-enhancing effects of capital controls in the frictionless Ramsey benchmark without (S, s) costs. This calls for a richer set of policy constraints when modeling the optimal use of capital controls.