Foreign Capital and Economic Growth in the First Era of Globalization

We explore the association between income and international capital flows between 1880 and 1913. Capital inflows are associated with higher incomes per capita in the long-run, but capital flows also brought income volatility via financial crises. Crises also decreased growth rates of income per capita significantly below trend for at least two years leading to important short term output losses. Countries just barely made up for these losses over time, so that there is no conditional long-run income loss or gain for countries that experienced crises. This is in contrast to the recent wave of globalization when capital importing countries that experienced a crisis seemed to grow relatively faster over fixed periods of time. We discuss some possibilities that can explain this finding.

Financial Crises, 1880-1913: The Role of Foreign Currency Debt

What is the role of foreign currency debt in precipitating financial crises? In this paper we assemble data for nearly 30 countries between 1880 and 1913 and examine debt crises, currency crises, banking crises and twin crises. We pay special attention to the role of foreign currency and gold clause debt, currency mismatches and debt intolerance. We find fairly robust evidence that more foreign currency debt leads to a higher chance of having a debt crisis or a banking crisis. However, a key finding is that countries with noticeably different backgrounds, and strong institutions such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, and the US deftly managed their exposure to hard currency debt, generally avoided having too many crises and never had severe financial meltdowns. Moreover, a strong reserve position matched up to hard currency liabilities seems to be correlated with a lower likelihood of a debt crisis, currency crisis or a banking crisis. This strengthens the evidence for the hypothesis that foreign currency debt is dangerous when mis-managed. We also see that countries with previous default histories seem prone to debt crises even at seemingly low debt to revenue ratios. Finally we discuss the robustness of these results to local idiosyncrasies and the implications from this representative historical sample.

The Role of Foreign Currency Debt in Financial Crises: 1880-1913 vs. 1972-1997

What is the role of foreign currency debt in precipitating financial crises? In this paper we compare the 1880 to 1913 period to recent experience. We examine debt crises, currency crises, banking crises and the interrelation between these varieties of crises. We pay special attention to the role of hard currency debt, currency mismatches and debt intolerance. We find fairly robust evidence that high exposure to foreign currency debt does not necessarily lead to a high chance of having a debt crisis, currency crisis, or a banking crisis. A key finding is some countries do not suffer from great financial fragility despite high exposure to original sin. In the nineteenth century, the British offshoots and Scandinavia generally avoided severe financial meltdowns while today many advanced countries have high original sin but have had few financial crises. The common denominator in both periods is that currency mismatches matter. A strong reserve position or high exports relative to hard currency liabilities helps decrease the likelihood of a debt crisis, currency crisis or a banking crisis. This strengthens the evidence for the hypothesis that foreign currency debt is dangerous when mis-managed. We discuss the robustness of these results and make some general comparisons based on this evidence from over 60 years of intense international capital market integration.

Does Inequality Lead to a Financial Crisis?

The recent global crisis has sparked interest in the relationship between income inequality, credit booms, and financial crises. Rajan (2010) and Kumhof and Rancière (2011) propose that rising inequality led to a credit boom and eventually to a financial crisis in the US in the first decade of the 21st century as it did in the 1920s. Data from 14 advanced countries between 1920 and 2000 suggest these are not general relationships. Credit booms heighten the probability of a banking crisis, but we find no evidence that a rise in top income shares leads to credit booms. Instead, low interest rates and economic expansions are the only two robust determinants of credit booms in our data set. Anecdotal evidence from US experience in the 1920s and in the years up to 2007 and from other countries does not support the inequality, credit, crisis nexus. Rather, it points back to a familiar boom-bust pattern of declines in interest rates, strong growth, rising credit, asset price booms and crises.

Trade booms, trade busts and trade costs

What has driven trade booms and trade busts in the past and present? We derive a micro-founded measure of trade frictions from leading trade theories and use it to gauge the importance of bilateral trade costs in determining international trade flows. We construct a new balanced sample of bilateral trade flows for 130 country pairs across the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania for the period from 1870 to 2000 and demonstrate an overriding role for declining trade costs in the pre-World War I trade boom. In contrast, for the post-World War II trade boom we identify changes in output as the dominant force. Finally, the entirety of the interwar trade bust is explained by increases in trade costs

Trade costs in the first wave of Globalization

What drives globalization today and in the past? We employ a new micro-founded measure of bilateral trade costs based on a standard model of trade in differentiated goods to address this question. These trade costs gauge the difference between observed bilateral trade and frictionless trade. They comprise tariffs, transportation costs and all other factors that impede international trade but which are inherently difficult to observe. Trade costs fell on average by ten to Þfteen percent between 1870 and 1913. We also use this measure to decompose the growth of global trade over that period and Þnd that roughly 44 percent of the global trade boom can be explained by reductions in trade costs; the remaining 56 percent is attributable to economic expansion

Currency Mismatches, Default Risk, and Exchange Rate Depreciation: Evidence from the End of Bimetallism

It is generally very difficult to measure the effects of a currency depreciation on a country%u2019s balance sheet and financing costs given the endogenous properties of the exchange rate. History provides at least one natural experiment to test whether an exogenous exchange rate depreciation can be contractionary (via an increased real debt burden) or expansionary (via an improved current account). France%u2019s decision to suspend the free coinage of silver in 1876 played a paramount role in causing a large exogenous depreciation of the nominal exchange rates of all silver standard countries versus gold-backed currencies such as the British pound%u2014the currency in which much of their debt was payable. Our identifying assumption is that France%u2019s decision to end bimetallism was exogenous from the viewpoint of countries on the silver standard. To deal with heterogeneity we implement a difference in differences estimator. Sovereign yield spreads for countries on the silver standard increased in proportion to the potential currency mismatch. Yield spreads for silver countries increased ten to fifteen percent in the wake of the depreciation. Basic growth models suggest that the accompanying reduction in investment could have decreased output per capita by between one and four percent relative to the pre-shock trajectory. This also illustrates that a substantial proportion of the decrease in spreads gold standard countries identified in the %u201CGood Housekeeping%u201D literature could be attributable to the increase in exchange rate stability. Finally, if emerging markets are going to embrace international capital flows, the most export oriented countries will manage to mitigate the negative effects of a currency mismatch.

Currency Mismatches, Default Risk, and Exchange Rate Depreciation: Evidence from the End of Bimetallism

It is generally very difficult to measure the effects of a currency depreciation on a country’s balance sheet and financing costs given the endogenous properties of the exchange rate. History provides at least one natural experiment to test whether an exogenous exchange rate depreciation can be contractionary (via an increased real debt burden) or expansionary (via an improved current account). France’s decision to suspend the free coinage of silver in 1876 played a paramount role in causing a large exogenous depreciation of the nominal exchange rates of all silver standard countries versus gold-backed currencies such as the British pound—the currency in which much of their debt was payable. Our identifying assumption is that France’s decision to end bimetallism was exogenous from the viewpoint of countries on the silver standard. To deal with heterogeneity we implement a difference in differences estimator. Sovereign yield spreads for countries on the silver standard increased in proportion to the potential currency mismatch. Yield spreads for silver countries increased ten to fifteen percent in the wake of the depreciation. Basic growth models suggest that the accompanying reduction in investment could have decreased output per capita by between one and four percent relative to the pre-shock trajectory. This also illustrates that a substantial proportion of the decrease in spreads gold standard countries identified in the “Good Housekeeping” literature could be attributable to the increase in exchange rate stability. Finally, if emerging markets are going to embrace international capital flows, the most export oriented countries will manage to mitigate the negative effects of a currency mismatch.

Sudden Stops: Determinants and Output Effects in the First Era of Globalization, 1880-1913

Using a sample of 20 emerging countries from 1880 to 1913, we study the determinants and output effects of sudden stops in capital inflows during an era of intensified globalization. We find that higher levels of original sin (hard currency debt to total debt) and large current account deficits associated with reliance on foreign capital greatly increased the likelihood of experiencing a sudden stop. Trade openness and stronger commitment to the gold standard had the opposite effect. These results are robust for many sudden stop definitions used in the literature. Finally, we use a treatment effects model to show that after controlling for endogeneity sudden stops have a strong negative association with growth in per capita output. We also show that banking, currency and debt crises that were preceded by a sudden stop have much greater negative relation with growth than in the absence of a sudden stop.