Financial Market Imperfections, Real Exchange Rates, and Capital Flows

Abstract

We explore the role of domestic financial market frictions in explaining sharp movements in real and nominal exchange rates, capital flows, and output for a small open economy. Financial intermediaries arise endogenously to insulate depositors from the consequences of liquidity shocks and stochastic investment project returns, and to provide intermediation for efficient capital accumulation in the presence of a costly state verification problem. An increase in the world interest rate may provoke an increase in the fraction of credit-rationed entrepreneurs, a decrease in the steady state capital stock, and - when the elasticity of substitution between labor and capital is low - a depreciation of the real exchange rate and an outflow of capital. Hence we can account qualitatively for the recent experience of several emerging market economies in a model where all prices, including exchange rates, are perfectly flexible.