Financial globalization in emerging economies: Much ado about nothing?

Abstract

Financial globalization, defined as global linkages through cross-border financial flows, has become increasingly relevant for emerging markets as they integrate financially with the rest of the world. This paper argues that, because of the way it is often measured, it has also led to the misperception that financial globalization in emerging markets has been growing in recent years. The authors characterize the evolution of financial globalization in emerging markets using alternative measures, and find that, in the 2000s, financial globalization has grown only marginally and international portfolio diversification has been limited and declining over time. The paper revisits the empirical literature on the implications of financial globalization for local market deepening, international risk diversification, financial contagion, and financial dollarization, and finds them to be rather limited. Whereas financial globalization has indeed fostered domestic market deepening in good times, it has yielded neither the dividends of consumption smoothing (in line with limited portfolio diversification) nor the costs of amplifying global financial shocks. In turn, financial de-dollarization has largely reflected the undoing of financial offshoring and the valuation effects of real appreciation.