Is the Feldstein Horioka puzzle dead or dying?

In today’s Financial Times, Martin Wolf writes that

“The principal determinant of the pattern of capital flows is, it turns out, divergent savings rates. ... because investment rates were closer together than savings rates, the world's capital exporters were countries with high savings rates and the importers were ones with low savings rates.” (Martin Wolf, “Capital flow must change course”, Financial Times, August 29, 2005.)

Does this mean that one of the oldest puzzles of international financial economics, the Feldstein Horioka puzzle is dead or dying? Feldstein and Horioka showed that the cross sectional regression coefficient of investment rates on savings rates was close to unity. (Feldstein, M. and C. Horioka, 1980, “Domestic savings and international capital flows”, Economic Journal, 90, 314-329). This coefficient has fallen since then. Obstfeld and Rogoff noted that the regression coefficient had fallen to 0.60 for the early and mid 1990s as opposed to the 0.89 obtained by Feldstein and Horioka for the 1960s and early 1970s (Obstfeld, M. and K. Rogoff, 2000, “The six major puzzles in international macroeconomics: Is there a common cause?”, NBER Working Paper 7777).

Perhaps, freer capital markets are destroying what is left of the puzzle?

Posted at 11:16 am IST on Mon, 29 Aug 2005         permanent link

Categories: international finance

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