Frederic S Mishkin: Globalization and financial development
Remarks by Mr Frederic S Mishkin, Member of the Board of Governors of the US Federal Reserve
System, to the New Perspectives on Financial Globalization Conference, International Monetary Fund,
Washington DC, 26 April 2007.
* * *
In the United States and many other countries, students learn that the key to success is hard work. Yet
when we look at many developing countries, we see people who work extremely hard for long hours.
Their wages are low, and so they remain poor. And as a whole, their countries remain poor. If hard
work does not make a country rich, what does?
The right institutions are essential. Nobel laureate Douglass North defines institutions as the "rules of
the game in a society, or, more formally, humanly devised constraints that shape human intervention."
(North, 1990, p. 3). Among the institutions that are most crucial to economic growth are those that
enable a country to allocate capital to its most productive uses. Such institutions establish and
maintain strong property rights, an effective legal system, and a sound and efficient financial system.
In recent years, the field of economic development has come to the conclusion that "institutions rule"
and are critical to economic growth.1 An extensive literature focuses on financial development as a
significant force driving economic development.2
However, developing good institutions that foster financial development is not easy: It takes time for
institutions to evolve and adapt to local circumstances. In addition, vested interests in poor countries
often oppose the necessary reforms because they believe that such reforms will weaken their power
or allow other people to cut into their profits. How can poorer countries overcome these obstacles?
How can they change the distribution of power to forge the political will to promote institutional reform?
The answer is globalization.
I should note that the opinions I will express today are my own and not necessarily those of my
colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC).
Elements of institutional reform
Before examining the role of globalization in promoting financial development, let's first look briefly at
what steps must be taken to build an institutional infrastructure that will ensure a well-functioning
financial system.
1. Develop strong property rights
Strong property rights are needed to encourage productive investment because it will not be
undertaken if the returns on investment are likely to be taken away by the government or others.
Hernando de Soto, in his important book The Mystery of Capital, argues that the inability of the poor in
developing countries to acquire property rights is a central reason that they are unable to gain access
to capital and so remain mired in poverty. For example, the use of collateral is a crucial tool that helps
the financial system make loans because it reduces losses when loans go sour. A person who would
pledge land or capital for a loan must, however, legally own the collateral. Unfortunately, as de Soto
has documented, legalizing the ownership of capital is extremely expensive and time consuming for
the poor in developing countries. In one of his many astonishing examples, obtaining legal title to a
dwelling on urban land in the Philippines required taking 168 bureaucratic steps through 53 public and
private agencies over a period of 13 to 25 years.
2. Strengthen the legal system
A legal system that enforces contracts quickly and fairly is an essential step in supporting strong
property rights and financial development. For example, lenders write restrictive covenants into loan
contracts to prevent borrowers from taking on too much risk, but such covenants have value only if
they can be legally enforced. An inefficient legal system in which loan contracts cannot be enforced
will prevent productive lending from taking place. If setting up legitimate businesses or obtaining legal
title to property is too expensive, the poor will never have access to the legal system and will be cut off
from lending that could help them start small businesses and escape poverty.3 Setting up a simple
business in the United States generally requires only filling out a form and paying a nominal licensing
fee. In contrast, de Soto's researchers found that legally registering a small garment workshop in Peru
required 289 days; at 6 hours per day, the cost was about $1,200, which was approximately thirty
times the monthly minimum wage. The lack of property rights for all but the very rich, as documented
by de Soto, is a serious impediment to financial development.
3. Reduce corruption
Government is often the primary source of financial repression in developing countries. Rapacious
governments whose rulers treat their countries as personal fiefdoms are not uncommon: We have
seen these governments in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, and Ferdinand
Marcos's Philippines. Even officials in less tyrannical governments have been known to use the power
of the state to get rich. Not surprisingly, then, many governments pay lip service to property rights but
do not encourage a rule of law to protect them.
Eliminating corruption is essential to strengthening property rights and the legal system. When corrupt
officials demand bribes, they reduce the incentives for entrepreneurs to make investments. The ability
to buy off judges weakens the enforcement of legal contracts that enable the economic and financial
system to function smoothly.4
4. Improve the quality of financial information
High-quality financial information is essential to well-functioning financial markets. If lenders cannot
figure out what is going on in a firm, they will be unable to screen out good from bad credit risks or to
monitor the firm to ensure that it does not take on too much risk at the lender's expense. To make
reliable and accurate information more accessible, accounting standards must be high enough so that
prospective lenders can make sense of what is in a business's books. Rules that require businesses to
disclose information must be enforced to enable prospective investors to make sensible decisions
about whether the business deserves to get their hard-earned money.
5. Improve corporate governance
For people to be willing to buy stocks, another way to channel funds to business, rules must be
established to ensure that the managers of corporations act in the stockholders' interest. If managers
find it easy to steal from the corporation, or to use funds for their own personal use rather than for the
benefit of the company, no one will want to invest in the company. Finding the right balance of control
between management and stockholders is a challenge with which even we in the United States
continue to struggle.
6. Develop sound, prudential regulation and supervision of the banking system
Banks are the main institutions that allocate credit in developing countries. The skills necessary for
bank officers to assess risks and make good lending decisions are critically important and often
scarce. Poor lending policies may cause too much capital to be channeled toward low-return projects
and insufficient capital to be directed toward the high-return projects needed to propel income and
growth. Moreover, deterioration in banks' balance sheets caused by insider lending or excessive risk-
taking that leads to a proliferation of bad loans can cause banks to cut back sharply on lending, with
negative effects on the economy. If the deterioration in banks' balance sheets is severe enough, it can
result in banking and currency crises that substantially disrupt the economy, phenomena that
unfortunately have been all too common in developing countries over the past several decades.5
Preventing banking crises must start with prudential regulation, in which rules set by the government
ensure that banks have sufficient capital and manage risks well. To guarantee that these regulations
are enforced, the government must also engage in prudential supervision, in which it monitors banks
by examining them on a regular basis to ensure that they are complying with government regulations.
The role of microfinance in developing countries is receiving much attention these days. Microfinance
is a positive development; it has clearly helped substantial numbers of poor people escape poverty,
and the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Muhammad Yunus for his pioneering efforts in this area was
certainly well deserved.6 However, microfinance is not a substitute for the institution building I am
talking about here.
Globalizing to advance institutional reform
Now that we understand what kinds of institutions are needed to promote financial development and
economic growth, let's turn to the question of how developing countries can improve the likelihood that
these institutions are developed.
One of the most powerful weapons for stimulating institutional development is globalization. Wealth is
not something that can be attained by remaining closed off to the rest of the world. Poorer countries
would do better by embracing globalization - that is, opening their financial markets and their markets
for goods and services to other nations so that funds, goods, and, often, the ideas that accompany
them can flow in. Such inflows can help them achieve reforms that build productivity and wealth that
will benefit all their citizens. Of course, countries need to take care that the foundations of the
fundamental institutions discussed above are in place, and they must monitor the pace of reform.
Opening financial markets
Now let's look at how opening financial markets to foreigners promotes financial development.
Globalizing the domestic financial system by opening financial markets to foreigners encourages
financial development and growth in wealth in two ways. First, opening financial markets to foreign
capital directly increases access to capital and lowers its cost for those with productive investments to
make.7 We know that labor is cheap in poor countries, and so we might think that capital would be
especially productive there. Just think of how hugely profitable a factory might be in a country where
wages are one-tenth of those in the United States. Although some of that differential would likely
reflect the higher productivity of American workers, capital should, nevertheless, have extremely high
returns in such countries, and, in principle, we should expect substantial flows of capital from rich
countries (where the returns on capital should be relatively low) to poor countries (where they should
be far higher). Such capital flows could lead to substantial benefits for poor countries in the form of
larger capital stocks, higher productivity, and more rapidly growing incomes.
In fact, as we well know, at present capital flows are moving, on net, from poor countries to rich ones,
that is, in a direction opposite to the one we would expect. Many reasons have been proposed for this
apparent paradox, but one of them certainly is the weakness of financial systems in poor countries, as
described earlier. This point leads us to a second benefit of financial globalization: Opening markets to
foreign financial institutions promotes reforms to the financial system that improve its functioning.
Allowing foreign financial institutions to operate in an emerging-market country brings in expertise and
best practices, such as those designed to screen good from bad credit risks and to monitor borrower
activities to reduce the amount of risk they take.8 Because of their familiarity with more-advanced
financial systems, foreign financial firms also are likely to increase the pressure on the domestic
government to institute reforms that will make the financial system work more effectively.
As domestic financial institutions start to lose business to better-run and more trustworthy foreign
institutions, they will realize the need for a better legal and accounting infrastructure that will make it
easier for them to make loans to new customers. Domestic financial institutions will then be far more
likely to advocate for and support the reforms that achieve this result.
Of course, this is not to say that in a genuinely corrupt and anticompetitive environment financial
globalization, by itself, can still engender an efficient, dynamic, and modern financial system. Recent
research has shown that when some countries opened up to international capital markets too soon in
the absence of some basic supporting conditions, vulnerabilities to sudden stops of capital flows
increased. Thus, some preconditions must exist with respect to a minimum level of institutional quality,
financial market development, and macroeconomic stability before financial globalization can further
improve financial market and institutional development.9 That said, given these preconditions and
some constituency for progress and reform, financial globalization can be a powerful force in support
of such efforts.
Opening trade in goods
Next, let's consider how opening domestic markets to foreign goods can promote the development of
better institutions.
Although not immediately obvious, opening domestic markets to foreign goods, known as "trade
liberalization," can be a key driver of financial development. It can weaken the political power of
entrenched business interests that might otherwise block institutional reforms, a point that is
Saving Capitalism from the
emphatically made by Rajan and Zingales (2004) in their book Capitalists.
Trade liberalization, which promotes a more competitive environment, will lower the revenue of
entrenched firms so that they will need greater access to external sources of capital. Thus, they will be
more likely to support reforms that promote a deeper and more efficient financial system. In fact,
research indicates that a deeper financial sector is positively associated with greater trade openness
(Rajan and Zingales, 2003; Svaleryd and Vlachos, 2002).
Free trade also promotes financial deepening by reducing corruption. High tariffs breed corruption
because importers have incentives to pay customs officials to look the other way when the importers
avoid tariffs by smuggling in goods. Not surprisingly, countries that restrict international trade are
found to be more corrupt (Ades and Di Tella, 1994).
Even when developing countries are unwilling to tear down all barriers to imports of foreign goods,
they can still generate incentives for institutional reform by removing obstacles that prevent domestic
producers from engaging in international trade. Facilitating production for overseas markets creates a
greater need for a well-functioning financial system because, to compete effectively in the international
arena, firms need better access to capital. If they can't get capital, they won't be able to make the
investments they need to increase productivity and price their goods competitively. Accordingly,
international trade creates a demand for reforms that will make the financial system more efficient.
The case of China
We are seeing how the globalization of trade is driving financial reform in China. As Chinese
enterprises increasingly enter international markets, they need a better financial system that can
ensure that the allocation of their high domestic savings is done efficiently and is responsive to market
developments. Although it has taken time, globalization is helping to generate the demand for an
improved financial system, which is driving the reform process.
The Communist leadership recognizes that the old development model must change. The government
has announced that state-owned banks are being put on the path to be privatized and has allowed
foreign investment in China's banking system ($20 billion in 2005).10 The government is also engaged
in legal reform to make contracts more enforceable. In August 2006, the National People's Congress
enacted a new bankruptcy law that gives creditors greater protection if a firm goes bankrupt, and last
month it approved a law that gives individuals more legal protection for their property.11
China, of course, is an example of a country that has actively encouraged exports as a means of
propelling its economic growth and development. To some extent, China may have gone too far in its
use of policy to promote export growth. Increased reliance on market-determined prices will help
ensure that the allocation of resources into the export sector does not exceed their efficient use. The
goal should be to raise productivity toward world-class standards in all sectors of the economy.
Recently China's authorities have agreed that some rebalancing of the sources of growth away from
exports and toward domestic demand is in order. Among China's East Asian neighbors, the
importance of developing industries to meet demand for domestic uses also is receiving increasing
attention.
The problem of export restrictions
Nevertheless, developing production for exports may still be useful for those countries at the lowest
rungs of the developmental ladder, and it is surprising that many of the world's poorest developing
countries still not only do not encourage an export orientation but in fact maintain a regime of taxes,
restrictions, and other policies that effectively discourage it. This problem remains especially serious in
some African economies and may help explain why their growth performance has been so
disappointing.
The primary way that governments discourage exports is by imposing large taxes on them. Because
high export taxes are one method of obtaining revenue, governments may be attracted to them to
solve their budget problems. They may also use these taxes to punish their political opponents, who
are often involved in a particular export industry. The government can then distribute the resulting
revenue to their supporters.
The most pernicious forms of export taxes are those that are hidden through the government's setting
a fixed official exchange rate that artificially keeps the domestic currency at a value well above what it
would be worth in terms of foreign currency (say, U.S. dollars) in a free market. The government then
makes it illegal to sell dollars for the larger amount of domestic currency that could be obtained in the
black market. The difference between the official exchange rate and the free, black-market rate (often
called the "black-market premium") imposes a tax on exporters because they are forced to sell the
dollars they earn to the government or to the central bank at the official rate, and thus they receive a
much lower price for their goods in terms of the domestic currency.
Although in recent decades a great many countries have abandoned currency controls and dismantled
their black markets, such controls still exist in some of the poorest economies, especially in Africa. In
some countries, the tax from the black-market premium is confiscatory. An example from history
illustrates this point. In 1982 Ghana had a black-market premium of more than 1,000 percent, and so
exporters of cocoa (primarily from a tribe different from that of the ruling government party) were
getting only 6 percent of the world price. Given such a high tax rate, it came as no surprise that cocoa
exports, which had accounted for 19 percent of Ghana's gross domestic product in the 1950s,
accounted for only 3 percent by 1982 (Easterly, 2001, p. 222). During the twenty years when the
black-market premium was so high, the average income of Ghanaians fell 30 percent.
Like many such unwarranted controls on economic life, high black-market premiums also breed
corruption, with all its negative effects, because they create strong incentives to bribe officials or to
smuggle goods to avoid paying the black-market-premium tax. (Indeed, one of the reasons that
governments in poorer countries often use this method of taxation rather than an explicit tax is that it
allows government officials to get rich from the bribes they receive.)
Other gains from trade liberalization
Although we have been focusing on how globalization promotes financial development, we shouldn't
forget that trade globalization, which involves both trade liberalization and an export orientation, is a
key driver of economic growth for reasons additional to those already mentioned.12
The first economics course that college students encounter always teaches the concept of
comparative advantage: By trading with another country, you can focus your production on what you
are really good at so that your productivity will be high. This higher productivity then leads to higher
economic welfare.
Trade liberalization, more importantly, promotes competition in domestic markets, which in turn forces
domestic firms to increase productivity and make better products, both of which drive economic
growth. If a foreigner produces a better product that can be imported, domestic firms must make a
better product at a lower price to keep selling their product at home. One graphic example of how
trade promotes competition occurred in India, which up until 1991 had protected its tool industry with a
100 percent tariff (tax on imports). After the Indian government cut the tariff sharply, Taiwanese firms
initially grabbed one-third of the Indian market. Over the next decade, however, Indian firms boosted
their productivity almost to the levels of Taiwanese firms, thereby winning back the domestic market.
Eventually Indian tool firms became so efficient that they were able to start selling their goods abroad
and became substantial exporters.13
Decreasing barriers to imports also helps promote exports. Increased competition from imports lowers
the profits firms can earn by focusing solely on the domestic market, and so they naturally concentrate
more of their energy on exporting. Moreover, trade liberalization helps developing countries gain
access to foreign markets in advanced countries, as illustrated by the fact that the United States,
through free-trade agreements, has been more willing to lower tariffs for countries such as Mexico and
Chile if they do the same for the United States.
Empirical evidence indicates that trade liberalization has positive effects on productivity and economic
growth for both importing and exporting countries: It has even been found to be associated with
morerapid increases in life expectancy and a reduction in infant mortality.14 Yet, as is often the case in
economics, empirical evidence is never completely clear cut: Some economists question whether the
evidence strongly supports a positive link between trade liberalization and growth.15 Nonetheless, the
logic of the benefits of trade liberalization and the preponderance of the evidence supporting its
positive effects lead most members of the economics profession, including me, to the following
conclusion: Trade liberalization is highly beneficial not only for the overall economy but also for its
constituent sectors. The resulting economic growth is a rising tide that raises all boats and is an
important tool for poverty alleviation.
But even if trade liberalization is not adopted, giving domestic producers the opportunity to sell goods
to rich countries' markets can be an important engine for growth in the world's poorest countries. One
crucial way that governments in developing countries can encourage exports is by providing the
transportation infrastructure - ports, roads, and airports - that make it easier for businesses to send
their goods abroad. Because foreigners don't have a natural predilection to buy your goods, you have
to be supercompetitive - your goods have to be better and cheaper than the goods made in foreign
countries. Domestic firms have to focus even more on being highly productive, and boosting
productivity will lead to rapid economic growth.
12
Indeed, almost all economists think that trade liberalization, a key element of globalization, is a good thing. For example, in
Kearl and others (1979), 97 percent of economists agreed (generally or with some provisions) with the statement that "tariffs
and import quotas reduce general economic welfare." A typical view advocating trade liberalization is expressed by Jagdish
Bhagwati, one of the most prominent trade theorists in the world, in Bhagwati (2004).
13
This example comes from Weil (2005, p. 322) and is described more extensively in Dollar and Collier (2001).
14
The literature on the effects of trade liberalization on growth and poverty is immense. See the surveys in Temple (1999);
Bourguignon and others (2002); Winters, McCulloch, and McKay (2004); and Wolf (2004). Earlier studies found that trade
openness was associated with higher growth rates (Dollar, 1992; Sachs and Warner, 1995; and Edwards, 1998). However,
because the direction of causation from this evidence is difficult to establish, other researchers have used instrumental
variable procedures to establish causality from trade liberalization to growth (for example, Frankel and Romer, 1999). Using
a different approach to identify the direction of causation, Lee, Ricci, and Rigobon (2004) also find that trade openness has
a positive effect on growth.
15
For example, Harrison (1996) and especially Rodriguez and Rodrik (2000).
BIS Review 41/2007
Japan's experience shows what focusing on exporting can accomplish. In the immediate aftermath of
World War II, Japan was a poor country. Its economic infrastructure had been destroyed by the war.
To convince Americans and others to buy Japanese products, Japanese firms had to produce goods
that were cheaper and better than their American-made counterparts. As a result, the export industries
in Japan became enormously productive and supercompetitive. Productivity grew, and three decades
after World War II, Japan became one of the richest countries in the world.
South Korea, one of the great Asian success stories even with its crisis in the late 1990s, had very
high barriers to trade until the 1990s, and its early development strategy did not include opening its
domestic market to foreign goods. However, through its export sector, South Korea has participated
fully in global markets, and this participation has been a key to its success. South Korea's
development strategy focused on promoting its export sector, and it is the export sector that led to high
productivity and economic growth. Indeed, all examples of successful growth stories in developing
economies (China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Chile) have involved export sectors that
met the test of international competition, and some of these economies have also pursued trade
liberalization.
In almost all the industrializing East Asian economies, future growth will likely have to follow a more
balanced path that relies less on exports and more on production for the domestic market. Such
adjustments are needed not only to secure such economies' further development but also to alleviate
the pattern of external imbalances around the global economy. It is in the world's poorest countries -
especially in Africa and Latin America - that additional participation in global markets has the highest
priority.
Only by embracing global markets can developing countries raise living standards.16 Trade
liberalization has a critical role to play in economic growth by directly stimulating domestic firms to
become more productive. And along with financial globalization, it can also encourage
emergingmarket economies to develop the institutions that foster financial development. Globalization should be
one of the highest priorities for developing countries.
The role of advanced countries
Can we in the advanced countries help? Yes, we can do so by supporting the opening of our markets
to goods and services from emerging-market countries. By encouraging these countries to increase
their participation in global markets, we create exactly the right incentives for them to implement the
hard measures that will enable them to grow rich. As we have seen, exporters have strong incentives
to be productive so that they can take advantage of access to our markets, and thus they will make the
investments needed for growth. They also will push for the institutional reforms to make financial
markets more efficient and promote financial deepening. By getting financial markets to work well,
exporters will have access to the capital they need to increase their business.
Opening our markets to emerging-market countries is an important way that those in advanced
countries can help emerging-market economies become successful. While providing aid to poor
countries can, in the right circumstances, help eradicate poverty, it often will not work because it
usually does not create the right incentives to promote economic growth. A handout is almost never as
effective as a hand up.
Some are concerned about the consequences for us if we in the United States allow free competition
in our markets for goods and services from countries where wages are low. Keeping many countries
poor and their workers unproductive may seem to be to our benefit. But as shown in the examples of
post-World War II recovery in Europe and Japan, and in the rapid growth in the 1970s and 1980s in
the newly industrialized economies of Asia, higher standards of living throughout the global economy
actually work to our benefit. Prosperity in our trading partners creates growing markets for U.S.
exports of high-value goods. And over time, as workers' productivity abroad rises, so will their wages
and incomes. It is true that the changes brought about in our economy by globalization impose
significant costs on some domestic workers. We need to develop policies to help those workers
without undermining the global trading system. The costs to us of damaging that system would far
outweigh the benefits that some might gain from protectionist measures. Promoting trade liberalization
helps us not only do good but also do well.
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