Abstract

Since the 1990s emerging market and developing countries (EMDCs) have been accumulating massive amounts of international reserves. The fundamental factor behind this reserve hoarding is financial in nature rather than trade-related, stemming from the widespread adoption of capital account liberalization in EMDCs, the resulting exposure to heightened financial volatility, and the consequent need to accumulate reserves as a self-insurance against potential disruptions in capital flows. Precautionary reserve hoarding, however, follows a circular logic that not only imposes heavy opportunity costs on EMDCs but also defeats the very purpose of capital account liberalization. When EMDCs accumulate reserves to hedge against capital account shocks, they are essentially recycling privately incurred short-term capital inflows into publicly incurred capital outflows, engaging in a reverse carry-trade that neither makes any economic sense nor results in any net transfer of financial resources from abroad. The net effect of this circular logic behind financial openness and precautionary reserve accumulation is a regressive and inequitable shifting of the costs of financial volatility from richer to poorer countries.

Recommended Citation

Youngwon Cho (2012) "Making the Poor Pay for the Rich: Capital Account Liberalization and Reserve Accumulation in the Developing World," Globalizations: Vol. 11 : Iss. 5, Article 6.
Available at: http://services.bepress.com/globalizations/vol11/iss5/art6