Essays on international capital flows and benchmarked investors

This thesis provides an empirical investigation of international capital flows and how they affect financial markets and economic activity, with a focus on capital flows from benchmarked investors. In the first chapter, I study different channels through which well-known benchmark indexes impact fin...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Williams, Tomás
Tipo de recurso: tesis doctoral
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2017
País:España
Institución:CBUC, CESCA
Repositorio:TDR. Tesis Doctorales en Red
OAI Identifier:oai:www.tdx.cat:10803/403952
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10803/403952
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:International capital flows
Benchmarking
Benchmarks
33
Descripción
Sumario:This thesis provides an empirical investigation of international capital flows and how they affect financial markets and economic activity, with a focus on capital flows from benchmarked investors. In the first chapter, I study different channels through which well-known benchmark indexes impact financial markets across countries. Exogenous, changes in benchmarks affect the asset allocation by international mutual funds, and by doing so they impact capital flows, asset prices and exchange rates. In the second chapter, I show that government access to foreign credit increases private access to credit. I use a natural experiment that increased the capital inflows by benchmarked investors to Colombia’s sovereign debt market. Results show that after this event, commercial banks in Colombia reduced their exposure to government debt, and increased credit to the private sector, suggesting positive effects on the real economy. In the third chapter, I argue that because of the way financial globalization is often measured, it has led to the misperception that financial globalization in emerging markets has been growing in recent years. Using alternative measures I find that, financial globalization has grown only marginally and international portfolio diversification has been limited.