Does Financial Sector Development Augment Cross-Border Capital Flows?

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe sharp increase in volatility of capital flows in recent years has resulted in many countries altering the regulations governing the flow of foreign capital only to find such changes having a limited impact. We postulate that one reason for the limited effectiveness of such changes in regulations is the level of financial sector development in the country. As a country enhances its level of financial sector development, it also develops more and more sophisticated financial instruments. The more advanced the domestic financial instruments are, and the deeper is the integration of the domestic financial markets with the world markets, the greater is the likelihood of developing strategies to bypass capital account management measures. In this paper, we use various empirical techniques to identify the impact of financial sector development on capital flows, after accounting for regulatory regime. The empirical results indicate that there is a threshold effect in the financial sector development capital flow relationship. In particular, financial sector development augments greater integration with global capital flows only above a threshold level. Below the threshold level we find financial development reduces the extent of integration with global capital markets.