Capital Controls and Electoral Cycles

Nicolas Gavoille and Katharina Hofer

No 5, SSE Riga/BICEPS Research Papers from Baltic International Centre for Economic Policy Studies (BICEPS), Stockholm School of Economics in Riga (SSE Riga)

Abstract: This paper studies the relation between the evolution of capital controls and electoral cycles. We exploit a dataset containing detailed information on the level of restrictions on capital flows for 98 countries on an annual base from 1995 to 2015, constructed by Fernandez et al. (2016). First, we find that restrictions are more likely to increase during an election year. Elections prove to be more closely related to changes in capital controls than any economic variable. Second, these changes are driven pre- dominantly by restrictions on capital outflows and on relatively liquid asset categories. Third, changes tend to occur after elections rather than before. Finally, capital controls increase by more if the new government is more leftist or less liberal than its predecessor, and more electoral uncertainty is related to higher restrictions on capital flows. Overall, these results suggests that theories examining the cyclical properties of capital controls should also consider electoral cycles.

Pages: 64 pages
Date: 2018-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol
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Journal Article: Capital Controls and Electoral Cycles (2021)
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