Matthew Higgins and Thomas Klitgaard — Capital Flight inside the Euro Area: Cooling Off a Fire Sale

Countries in the euro area periphery such as Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain saw large-scale capital flight in 2011 and the first half of 2012. While events unfolded much like a balance of payments crisis, the contraction in domestic credit was less severe than would ordinarily be caused by capital flight of this scale. Why was that? An important reason is that much of the capital flight was financed by credits to deficit countries’ central banks, with those credits extended collectively by other central banks in the euro area. This balance of payments financing was paired with policies to supply liquidity to periphery commercial banks. Absent these twin lifelines, periphery countries would have had to endure even steeper recessions from the sudden withdrawal of foreign capital.

Federal Reserve Bank of New York — Liberty Street Economics
Capital Flight inside the Euro Area: Cooling Off a Fire Sale
Matthew Higgins, vice president in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Emerging Markets and International Affairs Group, and Thomas Klitgaard, vice president in the Research and Statistics Group