By Dani Rodrik and Arvind Subramanian
First large downhill flows of capital – from rich countries to poor countries – led to the Latin American debt crisis of the early 1980s. In the 1990s similar flows begat the Asian financial crisis.
Since 2002 the flows have been uphill, from emerging markets and oil-exporting countries to the developed world, especially the US. But the outcome has not been very different. So, it does not seem to matter how capital flows. That it flows in sufficiently large quantities across borders – the celebrated phenomenon of financial globalisation – seems to spell trouble.
Causes and consequences vary, depending on which way capital flows. Developing country borrowing was associated with unsustainable fiscal policies (Latin America) and inappropriate exchange rate policies (Asia). But the financial sector was not blameless: for every overborrower there was an overlender.
The pathologies were different when the US went on a borrowing binge. Large current account surpluses and the associated savings glut in the rest of the world fed a global liquidity boom, which stoked asset prices. Even though the roots of the subprime crisis lie in domestic finance, international capital flows magnified its scale.
The remainder of this column can be read here. Debate from our panel of economists appears below.
