Capital Controls, Global Liquidity Traps and the International Policy Trilemma

Michael Devereux and James Yetman

No 19091, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The 'International Policy Trilemma' refers to the constraint on independent monetary policy that is forced on a country which remains open to international financial markets and simultaneously pursues an exchange rate target. This paper shows that, in a global economy with open financial markets, the problem of the zero bound introduces a new dimension to the international policy trilemma. International financial market openness may render monetary policy ineffective, even within a system of fully flexible exchange rates, because shocks that lead to a 'liquidity trap' in one country are propagated through financial markets to other countries. But monetary policy effectiveness may be restored by the imposition of capital controls, which inhibit the transmission of these shocks across countries. We derive an optimal monetary policy response to a global liquidity trap in the presence of capital controls. We further show that, even though capital controls may facilitate effective monetary policy, except in the case where monetary policy is further constrained (beyond the zero lower bound constraint), capital controls are not desirable in welfare terms.

JEL-codes: F3 F32 F33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-dge, nep-ifn, nep-mac, nep-mon and nep-opm
Note: IFM
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published as Michael B. Devereux & James Yetman, 2014. "Capital Controls, Global Liquidity Traps, and the International Policy Trilemma," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 116(1), pages 158-189, 01.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w19091.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Capital Controls, Global Liquidity Traps, and the International Policy Trilemma (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:19091

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w19091

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().