Money never sleeps: Capital flows under global risk and uncertainty

Abstract

We employ various indexes, namely the geopolitical risk (GPR) index, economic policy uncertainty (EPU) index, and world uncertainty index (WUI), to comprehensively capture multiple dimensions of risk and uncertainty and investigate their influence on capital flows measured by different categories of mutual fund flows and IMF intercountry transaction flows. We find that GPR harms aggregate capital flows of both equity and bond funds, whereas rising EPU only significantly reduces the capital flows of equity funds. Additionally, WUI increases capital flowing into active bond funds, indicating a flight-to-safety effect. Besides, high GPR environments amplify the negative influence of EPU on capital flows of equity funds. Meanwhile, in more geopolitically stable conditions, bond markets may serve as a preferred shelter for navigating EPU. However, we find that the impacts of risk and uncertainty on transaction flows are marginal. Furthermore, we demonstrate that global risk or uncertainty (EPU and WUI) plays a more dominant role than country-specific ones in shaping capital flows. Therefore, this study offers novel insights into how different dimensions of risk and uncertainty can shape capital flows differently and whether the compounding effect of risk and uncertainty differs from that of a single risk or uncertainty.