Kristin Forbes, Professor of Global Economics, Sloan School of Management, M.I.T. :
Emerging markets are going through another period of volatility – and the most popular boogeyman is the US Federal Reserve.
The basic storyline is that less accommodative US monetary policy has caused foreign investors to withdraw capital from emerging markets, causing currency depreciations, equity declines, and increased borrowing costs. In many cases, these adjustments will slow growth and increase the risk of some type of crisis.
This storyline gained credibility in the spring of 2013, when talk by Federal Reserve officials of future "tapering" of purchases of US Treasuries and agencies caused sharp market reactions. However, on 18 December, when the Federal Reserve announced the start of tapering, the effect on emerging-market currencies and exchange rates was muted (Figure 1).
The strikingly different reactions to the "taper talk" and "taper start" suggest that the simplistic storyline about what is causing recent volatility in emerging markets is missing something. This column argues that we need to add three important considerations:
The role of global growth and uncertainty;
The role of country differentiation; and
The role of domestic investors.
Figure 2 graphs US interest rates and capital flows to emerging markets from 1990 to 2013. If US interest rates were a key driver of these capital flows, one would expect to see capital flows increasing during periods of low rates and vice versa. Over the last decade, however, this relationship does not hold. During the mid-2000s, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates while capital flows to emerging markets soared. During the Global Financial Crisis, the US lowered interest rates sharply and capital flows to emerging markets collapsed. In fact, the correlation between capital flows to emerging markets (as a percentage of GDP) and US interest rates from 1990 to 2013 is 12%. This is relatively small, but a positive correlation is the opposite of what would be expected if changes in US interest rates were the key factor driving capital flows.
More: pragcap.com/author/vox
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