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Bad Investments and Missed Opportunities? Postwar Capital Flows to Asia and Latin America

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Abstract

After World War II, international capital flowed into slow-growing Latin America rather than fast-growing Asia. This is surprising as, everything else equal, fast growth should imply high capital returns. This paper develops a capital flow accounting framework to quantify the role of different factor market distortions in producing these patterns. Surprisingly, we find that distortions in labor markets ? rather than domestic or international capital markets ? account for the bulk of these flows. Labor market distortions that indirectly depress investment incentives by lowering equilibrium labor supply explain two-thirds of observed flows, while improvement in these distortions over time accounts for much of Asia?s rapid growth.

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  • Lee E. Ohanian & Paulina Restrepo-Echavarria & Mark L. J. Wright, . "Bad Investments and Missed Opportunities? Postwar Capital Flows to Asia and Latin America," Staff Report, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedmsr:563
    DOI: 10.21034/sr.563
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Domestic capital markets; Capital flows; International capital markets; Labor markets;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J20 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - General
    • F21 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Investment; Long-Term Capital Movements
    • F41 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Open Economy Macroeconomics
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth

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