DP13819 A Model of Fickle Capital Flows and Retrenchment
Author(s): | Ricardo Caballero, Alp Simsek |
Publication Date: | June 2019 |
Date Revised: | July 2019 |
Keyword(s): | asset fire sales, capital controls, fickleness, Global liquidity, Gross capital flows, Policy Coordination, reach-for-safety, reach-for-yield, retrenchment, scarcity of safe assets |
JEL(s): | E3, E4, F3, F4, F6, G1 |
Programme Areas: | Financial Economics, International Macroeconomics and Finance |
Link to this Page: | cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=13819 |
We develop a model of gross capital flows and analyze their role in global financial stability. In our model, consistent with the data, when a country experiences asset fire sales, foreign investments exit (fickleness) while domestic investments abroad return home (retrenchment). When countries have symmetric expected returns and financial development, the benefits of retrenchment dominate the costs of fickleness and gross flows increase fire-sale prices. Fickleness, however, creates a coordination problem since it encourages local policymakers to restrict capital inflows. When countries are asymmetric, capital flows are driven by additional mechanisms, reach-for-safety and reach-for-yield, that can destabilize the receiving country.