Portfolio Capital Flows: Not an unmitigated blessing. A literature survey

Abstract

This paper is a literature survey on capital flows to developing countries. It analyzes thecharacteristics of the different components of capital flows. It also focuses on the factors,internal and external, that make capital flow into developing countries, as well as on theconsequences of these flows -and their reversals- on the health of the recipient economies.Finally, it surveys the policies that have been implemented to handle them in search for themost recommendable ones. Its  main conclusion is that capital inflows play a very importantrole for developing countries  by being an alternative for these economies to undergo a pathof growth, a possibility that otherwise will be undermined by the lack of sufficient domesticsavings. However, there is a large number of risks associated with capital inflows which aremagnified by the fact that capital-importing countries usually do not have neither adequateinstitutions, deep financial markets, strong banking systems, nor enough macroeconomicexpertise. All these factors put together make capital inflows to developing countries “notan unmitigated blessing”