The Effect of Simultaneous Flights and Stops on Growth and Investment: Evidence from Emerging Economies

Abstract

This paper attempts to investigate if a significant increase in foreign asset purchases by domestic investors(i.e., a flight) is detrimental to emerging markets’ growth and investment using a panel data set that covers 56 emerging markets between 1990 and 2014. Furthermore, it studies the effect of a flight when it occurs simultaneously with a significant decrease in domestic asset purchases by foreign investors(i.e., a stop) using an interaction model. A key difference of our study is that we estimate this interaction effect using three generalized method of moments estimators(difference GMM, system GMM, and orthogonal deviation GMM) to address the causal effects rather than the associations between them. The results suggest that a flight alone is not harmful whereas simultaneous flights and stops could depress growth and investment. Therefore, the results of this paper complement the empirical evidence of the existing literature.