Estimates of Capital Flight and Its Behavior
Keywords:
capital flight, balance of payments, Latin America, capital outflows, developing countries, Lorenz curveAbstract
This paper presents estimates of capital flight using eight alternative methodologies, with a focus on Latin America. While these methodologies differ in approach, I show that the identities used in balance-of-payments data make most close in their final measurement. I document that capital flight is not an exclusively Latin American phenomenon, but is much wider spread than commonly thought. Compared to countries' exports, capital flight is evenly distributed, and the capital flight-exports Lorenz-curve is close to the 45-degree line. There also appear to be important common factors driving capital flight as there is considerable comovement across countries in certain years.Downloads
References
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Copyright (c) 1997 Stijn Claessens
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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