The Main Determinants of Capital Inflows in Emerging Market Economies: Does the Exchange Rate Regime Matter?

Abstract

There is a bulk of literature in analyzing the impacts of exchange rate regimes (ERRs) on capital flows into emerging market economies. However, these studies mainly do not take into account integration and cointegration properties of variables. This paper aims to tackle this important issue by investigating whether ERRs matter for the impacts of the main push (global financial conditions, GFC) and pull (real GDP) factors on capital inflows into emerging market economies. We find that worsening GFC decreases all types of capital inflow except foreign direct investments in case of floating ERR. This impact is statistically significant only for portfolio inflows in case of managed ERR. The pull factor is often positive and statistically significant in determining capital inflows in the long-run only under floating ERRs. These results suggest that the long-run impacts of the main pull and push factors on capital inflows are often magnified under more flexible ERRs.