Capital Account Liberalization and Firm Innovation: Worldwide Evidence

This study investigates whether capital account liberalization, a leading characteristic of globalization, is associated with firms’ future innovation output. Employing a novel firm-level panel data set covering 41 countries over two decades, we show that capital account liberalization is significantly associated with higher corporate patenting activities, particularly for firms from innovation-intensive industries. Further analyses show that the effect is stronger among firms from economies in a better legal environment, signifying the important role of good institutional quality in facilitating the positive impact of liberalization. The effect is also stronger among firms with higher initial productivity, consistent with the “productivity” hypothesis, according to which bigger and more productive firms generate more innovation after liberalization. Our findings are robust to the use of various measurements, subsamples, and estimation models. This study provides global firm-level evidence of the real economic impact of financial globalization.

Capital Account Liberalization Institutions and Economic Growth in the Emerging World

Purpose: The relationship between capital account liberalization and economic growth has been a fervently discussed subject among economists and policy-makers. The role of institutions is imperious to comprehensively investigate the impact of financial openness on growth. The objective of the study is to inspect the nexus between financial liberalization and economic growth after incorporating the contribution of institutional quality. Methodology: A panel of data on 17 emerging market economies (EMEs) is used for the period 1995-2019. We employ the GMM technique by using different de facto and de jure measures of financial liberalization along with institutional variables. Findings: The empirical results illustrate that better quality institutions strengthen the connection between capital account liberalization and output growth in the emerging World. Implications: The policymakers should focus on the more beneficial nature of financial liberalization such as FDI. Also, the policy should be aiming at availing the services of efficient human resources with proper institutional infrastructure.

Does Capital Account Liberalization Spur Entrepreneurship: The Role of Financial Development

Entrepreneurship is regarded as the cornerstone of the sustainable development of a society. In this study, we empirically investigate the possible economic impacts of capital account liberalization on entrepreneurship. Using a panel dataset of 103 countries and regions and the system generalized method of moments (GMM), this paper demonstrates a positive relationship between capital account liberalization and entrepreneurship in developed economies whereas a negative relationship in developing economies. Furthermore, domestic financial development plays an important moderating role in the relationship between capital account openness and entrepreneurship. Specifically, the negative impact of capital account liberalization in developing economies is mitigated by a high degree of domestic credit and equity market development, the continuous deepening of finance and better financial inclusion. Our findings imply that domestic financial development is an essential prerequisite for the opening of a country’s capital account, especially for developing countries.

Capital account liberalization and income inequality: a panel study of 28 European countries

Financial globalization has evolved from domestic policy to international scope policy. One of its form is Capital account liberalization which we can observe from the declining number of restrictions among countries for cross-border financial transaction, and the increasing level of capital flow between countries. Europe cross-country financial transaction has been increasing for the last three decades and this increase happened simultaneously with the increase of income inequality as measured with Gini index. This condition gives impression that there is a positive correlation between income inequality and capital account liberalization. This research aims to study whether income inequality corresponds to the increase of capital account liberalization in 28 Europe countries. Furthermore, this research seeks to understand the role of institutional quality and financial depth as threshold variables. By employing System GMM Estimator on balanced panel data, this study finds that capital account liberalization positively correlated with income inequality and institutional quality proven to be important threshold variable. These findings emphasize the urgency for policy maker to consider institutional quality before or during the implementation of capital account liberalization.

How Does Capital Account Liberalization Affect Systemic Financial Risks? Evidence from China

Capital account liberalization typically results in higher volumes of capital inflows and outflows for a country, yet abnormal cross-border capital flows may lead to overall financial risk accumulation, in turn causing tremendous damages to the economy. Using a time-varying parameter structural vector autoregression model with stochastic volatility (SV-TVP-SVAR), we identify time-varying effects of capital account liberalization on four types of systemic financial risks in China. Empirical results demonstrate that capital account liberalization, in the short run, can effectively curb the accumulation of macroeconomic and sudden stop risks. On the other hand, capital account liberalization may heighten credit crunch and asset bubble risks to varying degrees. We also find that some important capital account liberalization measures are double-edged: reform policies are likely to increase macroeconomic risk when optimizing the financing structure and reducing credit crunch risk.

Determinants of Industrial Development

Global evidence suggests that, for many countries, manufacturing typically has an inverted U-shaped relationship with development. But unlike the historical experience of most developed countries, for most developing countries the turning point of this relationship is occurring sooner in the development process, and at substantially lower levels of income. This is termed ‘premature deindustrialization’. The consequences of this may be particularly important if such countries can no longer rely on manufacturing-led development. Why are some countries more industrialized, or more deindustrialized, than other comparable countries? To explore these issues, this chapter uses panel-data econometric techniques to analyse the determinants of the share of manufacturing in GDP, across countries and across time. Domestic determinants include investment, government consumption, population size, human capital, democracy, and natural resource endowments. External determinants include trade openness, capital account liberalization, and exchange rate depreciation.