Capital controls and recovery from the financial crisis of the 1930s

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Mitchener, Kris James; Wandschneider, Kirsten
• 署名单位: Santa Clara University; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); National Bureau of Economic Research; Occidental College
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-1996
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2014.11.011
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 188-201
• 关键词: Capital controls; financial crises; Great Depression; Interwar gold standard

摘要

We examine the first widespread use of capital controls in response to a global or regional financial crisis. In particular, we analyze whether capital controls mitigated capital flight in the 1930s and assess their causal effects on macroeconomic recovery from the Great Depression. We find evidence that they stemmed gold outflows in the year following their imposition; however, time-shifted, difference-in-differences (DD) estimates of industrial production, prices, and exports suggest that capital controls did not accelerate macroeconomic recovery relative to countries that went off gold and floated. Countries imposing capital controls also appear to perform similar to the gold bloc countries once the latter group of countries finally abandoned gold. Time series analysis suggests that countries imposing capital controls refrained from fully utilizing their newly acquired monetary policy autonomy. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.