The massive surge in capital inflows to emerging market economies (EMEs) following the 2008 global financial crisis has reignited the debate on the pros and cons of international capital mobility. While free movement of capital across borders can reduce the cost of capital, enable investments and allow investors to diversify their portfolio, it can also pose significant systemic risks in the recipient country with negative consequences for growth and development.

Large capital inflows in excess of domestic absorption capacity could result in rapid exchange rate appreciation, making exports more expensive…

Capital controls are back in fashion. In the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, there is a renewed interest in capital controls as useful policy tools to prevent or mitigate financial crises. It is increasingly being acknowledged in policy circles that capital controls could insulate the domestic economy from volatile capital flows, due to the limited effectiveness of other policy measures (such as sterilization of capital flows and accumulation of foreign reserves). As many complexities are surrounding the issue of capital controls, the first policy brief explains what…

Argentina’s currency crisis is deepening. On August 29, the peso crashed more than 7 percent – the biggest one-day fall since December 2015 when President Mauricio Macri allowed the currency to float freely and removed capital controls. In a two-minute televised address on that day, Mr Macri said he had requested the International Monetary Fund to early release funds from a $50 billion stand-by arrangement. The televised address by President Macri did not help to eliminate market uncertainty. Instead, it made investors more jittery than ever, pushing the…

After making sufficient progress on the terms of the UK’s exit from the European Union, negotiations will now move on the thorny issue of forging a future UK-EU trade and investment relationship. The negotiations on the future relationship will resume once the EU leaders adopt guidelines at an EU summit to be held in Brussels during March 22-23, 2018. For the UK, the second phase of Brexit negotiations will be much more difficult than the phase one agreement concluded in December 2017.

As planned, the UK will formally leave the…

Electronic Commerce (e-commerce) has emerged as a key issue in the run-up to the 11th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to be held in Buenos Aires in December 2017. A number of countries across the development spectrum have backed inclusion of e-commerce in the WTO. Although the nature of disciplines that these countries favour is not entirely clear, yet the proposals strongly suggest that they would prefer using e-commerce as a vehicle for trade liberalisation in goods and services.

The issue of e-commerce was introduced in the…