Foreign capital in Latin America: A long-run structural Global VAR perspective

I study the determinants of capital flows to Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, assessing the relative importance of domestic and global factors. I estimate six VECM models, one for each Latin American country plus the Euro Area, Japan, and USA, and then embed them in a multi-country Global VAR. The co-integrating space is identified in terms of theoretical long-run relations linking net foreign assets (NFA) to the other variables of the model. The results show that in the long-run external prevail on domestic factors as determinants of the equilibrium behaviour of NFA, with the relative importance of each factor varying from one country to another. Generalized Impulse Response Functions (GIRF) and Forecast Error Variance Decomposition (GFEVD) provide overwhelming evidence that domestic shocks are predominantly responsible for the short-run dynamics of Latin American NFA. Although all previous studies focus on North-American economic influence, one striking result of this paper is that the US variables are by no means the main external factors affecting Latin American NFA. Quite on the contrary, Japanese and, to a lesser extent, European cyclical conditions explain a large proportion of Latin American NFA short-run behaviour.