Capital flows to the developing economies have long displayed a boom-and-bust pattern. Rarely has the cycle turned as abruptly as it did in the 1990s, however: surges in lending were followed by the Mexican peso crisis of 1994-95 and the sudden collapse of currencies in Asia in 1997. This volume maps a new and uncertain financial landscape, one in which volatile private capital flows and fragile banking systems produce sudden reversals of fortune for governments and economies. This environment creates dilemmas for both national policymakers who confront the "mixed blessing" of capital inflows and the international institutions that manage the recurrent crises.The authors—leading economists and political scientists—examine private capital flows and their consequences in Latin America, Pacific Asia, and East Europe, placing current cycles of lending in historical perspective. National governments have used a variety of strategies to deal with capital-account instability. The authors evaluate those responses, prescribe new alternatives, and consider whether the new circumstances require novel international policies.

This compilation helps understand the basic forces that are now determining the performance and prospects of emerging market economies (EMEs) around the world. In the past few years, there has been a sharp rise in private capital flows to well performing developing countries, commonly referred to as EMEs. With a drop in net transfers from official sources, the private capital flows in these countries now dwarf official flows. Growth and Development in Emerging Market Economies: International Private Capital Flows, Financial Markets and Globalization encapsulates in one volume the understanding of the inter-related topics of global imbalances, finance, investment, trade, and infrastructure. Such assemblage is difficult to find in the existing literature in this field. Many chapters discuss the situations in Asia and Latin America, drawing parallels and pointing out contrasts. The papers in this collection were discussed at the Emerging Markets Forum meeting held in Jakarta, Indonesia in September 2006. The contributors include highly experienced former policy makers and senior officials of multilateral institutions who have lifelong experience in policy formulation at the highest level. The collection would be of value to policy makers in developing countries, officials of multilateral development institutions and researchers and academicians in the field of EMEs.

This paper assesses empirically the key drivers of private capital flows to a large sample of emerging market economies in the last decade. It analyzes the effect of the global financial cycle, measured by the VIX, on capital flows and investigates the role of fundamentals and country characteristics in mitigating or amplifying its effect. Using interaction models, we find the effect of the VIX to be non-linear. For low levels of the VIX, capital flows are driven by fundamental factors. During periods of stress, the VIX becomes the dominant driver of capital flows while other determinants, with the exception of interest rate differentials, lose statistical significance. Our results also suggest that the effect of global financial conditions on gross private capital flows increases with the host country’s level of financial sector development. Finally, our results imply that countries cannot fully insulate themselves from global financial shocks, unless creating a fragmented global financial system.

This dissertation consists of three empirical chapters that address different aspects of private capital flows and financial crises in Asian and Latin American emerging markets.