This paper reviews the experience with capital controls in industrial and developing countries, considers the policy issues raised when the effectiveness of capital controls diminishes, examines the medium-term benefits and costs of an open capital account, and analyzes the policy measures that could help sustain capital account convertibility. As the effectiveness of capital controls eroded more rapidly in the 1980s than in earlier periods, new constraints were placed on the formulation of stabilization and structural reform programs. However, experience suggests that certain macroeconomic, financial, and risk management policies would allow countries to attain the benefits of capital account convertibility and reduce the financial risks created by an open capital account.

Each episode of volatility in financial markets heightens the attention of government officials and others to the role played by the hedge fund industry in financial market dynamics. Hedge funds were implicated in the 1992 crises that led to major exchange rate realignments in the European Monetary System, and again in 1994 after a period of turbulence in international bond markets. Concerns mounted in 1997 in the wake of the financial upheavals in Asia. And they were amplified in 1998, with allegations of large hedge fund transactions in various Asian currency markets and with the near collapse of a major hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM). This paper discusses the size, number, and investment styles of hedge funds, and their interactions with global financial markets. It reviews the present state of their supervision and regulation, and assesses various suggestions for regulating them more closely, often as part of new regulatory approaches to the larger financial markets of which hedge funds are but a small part.

This paper examines the types of market-related hedging instruments that could potentially be useful to indebted developing countries as they seek to manage the financial risks created by variability of the prices of external assets and commodities. The paper reviews the variability in interest rates, exchange rates, and prices of primary commodities and then analyzes the effects of this variability on the domestic and external performance of indebted developing countries. Market-related hedging instruments that are accessible to indebted developing countries are also examined.

Hedge funds are collective investment vehicles, often organized as private partnerships and resident offshore for tax and regulatory purposes. Their legal status places few restrictions on their portfolios and transactions, leaving their managers free to use short sales, derivative securities, and leverage to raise returns and cushion risk. This paper considers the role of hedge funds in financial market dynamics, with particular reference to the Asian crisis.

In response to the volatility of capital flows since the mid-1990s, many emerging market economies have taken a variety of steps designed to “selfinsure” against volatile capital flows. One such measure has been the development of local securities and derivatives markets as an alternative source of funding the public and corporate sectors. This paper examines this self-insurance policy, focusing on the extent to which emerging markets have developed local securities and derivatives, and what key policy issues have arisen as a result.

Official controls on interest rates and capital flows rule out the use of traditional interest rate parity conditions to measure changes in the degree of capital mobility confronting developing countries. This paper develops an alternative technique for measuring the cost of undertaking disguised capital flows when such official controls are present. This measure is derived from an intertemporal, optimizing model of an open economy incorporating the influence of the authorities’ foreign exchange market activities. The paper suggests that the real cost of undertaking disguised capital flows declined on average by nearly 70 percent between the early 1970s and the late 1980s.

This paper builds a multiperiod, general equilibrium framework for analyzing the macroeconomic effects of financial reforms in developing countries and the costs of maintaining official safety nets under the financial system during such reforms. While a financial liberalization yields efficiency gains, adverse macroeconomic effects can arise if the creditworthiness of the nonfinancial sector is weak. In this situation, financial liberalization may also increase the authorities’ expected deposit insurance funding obligations even with strong prudential supervision. Moreover, given the distortions in a repressed financial system, an increase in the required bank capital-asset ratio may increase the funding obligations associated with deposit insurance, particularly when the debt-servicing capacity of nonfinancial firms is low.

This paper examines how a country’s exchange rate policy should be adjusted when the degree of integration between domestic and external financial markets increases as a result of both domestic financial liberalization and the relaxation of capital controls. As the financial structure is opened and liberalized, the optimal scale of exchange market intervention changes as the relative importance of different domestic and foreign shocks for output and price stability is altered. Nonetheless, the response of the optimal degree of intervention to increases in the variances of the various domestic and foreign shocks is similar across all financial structures.

This paper reports the on-off nature of emerging market access to international capital markets appears to have become a key characteristic of international financial markets. Emerging market borrowers have begun to adapt: when the market for US dollar-denominated bonds has closed, these borrowers turn to the syndicated loan markets, attempt to issue in bonds denominated in euro or yen, or issue in local-currency bond markets. In addition, they employ staff with extensive experience in investment banking and securities trading, exploit “windows of opportunity” to prefund their yearly financing requirement, and engage in debt exchanges to extend the maturity of their debt and avoid a bunching of maturities. The consolidation of financial institutions is driven by attempts to exploit economies of scale and scope, and technological advances such as the Internet and deregulation that facilitate universal banking activities are making it easier to reap such economies. Advances in technology are also transforming the securities trading industry.