Currency Wars, Coordination, and Capital Controls

Olivier Blanchard

NBER Working Paper No. 22388
Issued in July 2016
 

The strong monetary policy actions undertaken by advanced economies' central banks have led to complaints of “currency wars” by some emerging market economies, and to widespread demands for more macroeconomic policy coordination. This paper revisits these issues. It concludes that, while advanced economies' monetary policies indeed have had substantial spillover effects on emerging market economies, there was and still is little room for coordination. It then argues that restrictions on capital flows were and are a more natural instrument for advancing the objectives of both macro and financial stability.