An alternative look at balance-of-payments puzzle : structural decomposition of accounts of 16 emerging markets

Abstract

The empricial evidence on pro-growth effect of capital account liberalization is inconclusive. I argue that, after liberalization, the link between structural finance needs of developing countries and debt flows lost its importance. Instead, the flight of resident capital and unproductive reserve accumulation have created new financing needs, limiting the augmentation of saving pools of developing countries and hence growth. I build four new components from balance-of-payments account that make it possible to track the new financing patterns. I investigate relationship between these components for 15 emerging market countries. I also make a case study for Turkey using vector autoregression technique to establish a causality link between dynamics of the new structural aggregates.