Capital controls and foreign currency denomination

Working paper 671
Author(s): 
Fernando Garcia-Barragan and Guangling Liu
Publication date: 
February, 2017
Classification-JEL: 
E32
E44
E58
F38
F41
Keywords: 
Capital control
Foreign currency denomination
Open economy macroeconomics
Financial friction
Welfare analysis
DSGE
This paper studies the effectiveness of capital controls with foreign currency denomination and its welfare implications. To do this, we develop a general equilibrium model with financial frictions and banking, in which assets and liabilities are denominated in both domestic and foreign currencies. We propose a non-pecuniary capital-control policy that limits the gap between foreign-currency denominated loans and deposits to the amount of foreign funds that bankers can borrow from the international credit market. We show that capital controls have a critical impact on the dynamics of assets and liabilities that are denominated in foreign currency. This critical impact works through the capital control constraint on quantitative nancial variables directly, not through the spreads. The non-pecuniary capital controls help to stabilize the nancial sector and, hence, reduces the negative spillovers to the real economy. A more restrictive capital-control policy signicantly attenuates the welfare effect of the foreign monetary policy and exchange rate shocks.
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