Capital Controls for Crisis Management Policy in a Global Economy

Abstract

Capital controls may be justified as a policy to combat a financial crisis. But for large economies, capital controls may have substantial spillovers to the rest of the world. We investigate the case for capital controls in a large open economy, when domestic financial constraints may bind during a crisis. When the crisis country is indebted, it must trade off the desire to tax inflows to improve the terms of trade and tax outflows to ease financial constraints. This trade-off renders noncooperative use of capital controls ineffective as crisis management policy. Effective use of capital controls for crisis management requires international cooperation. (JEL F23, F38, F41, G01, H21, H25)