Abstract

Foreign portfolio investment (FPI) flows have grown substantially in recent decades, following changes in the international financial system. In Brazil, FPI represented 66% of foreign direct investment between 1995 and 2009, which makes it meaningful to analyze these flows. In this paper, the relationships between FPI flows to Brazil, GDP, investment, and financial variables from 1995 to 2009 are analyzed, employing quarterly data and applying descriptive statistics, correlation coefficients, and Granger causality tests. Results show a positive relationship between flows, GDP, and investment. Relationships between flows and financial variables show a strong relationship between FPI and the real effective exchange rate, which could be one of the channels through which the flows are related to real variables by means of changes in relative domestic and foreign production costs. Expectations about future behavior of the economy seem to be an important explanation for the relationship between flows and the real variables. Because FPI is volatile and this volatility relates to real variables through the real effective exchange rate and the interest rate, there is a case to be made for the implementation of capital controls.

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