'Fed Tapering News and Emerging Markets'

How much did Fed tapering affect emerging markets?:

Fed Tapering News and Emerging Markets, by Fernanda Nechio, FRBSF Economic Letter: In the wake of the global financial crisis and recession of 2007–09, the Federal Reserve carried out a series of large-scale purchases of government and asset-backed securities to lower longer-term interest rates and provide additional stimulus to the economy. Following then-Chairman Ben Bernanke’s May 22, 2013, congressional testimony about the possibility that the Federal Reserve would begin scaling back these purchases—a reduction widely known as tapering—some financial market participants revised their beliefs about when the central bank would begin normalizing its highly accommodative monetary policy. Market participants moved forward the dates they expected the Fed to start reducing its large-scale asset purchases as well as the dates when they expected it to start raising the federal funds rate, its short-term policy interest rate (Bauer and Rudebusch 2013).

These changes in policy expectations led to reductions in market participants’ tolerance for risk and in particular to a downward reassessment of the probable returns from investing in emerging market economies. Following the global financial crisis, advanced economies put in place exceptionally easy monetary policy. During this period, many emerging market economies had received large waves of capital inflows. By contrast, after Chairman Bernanke’s testimony, many emerging market economies in Asia and Latin America experienced sharp capital flow reversals.

However, the distribution of these capital movements was not uniform. Patterns of capital outflows appeared to be related to a country’s macroeconomic fundamentals. Those in turn reflected to some degree the policies a country pursued during the years that followed the global financial crisis. This Economic Letter assesses how recent emerging market capital movements are related to a country’s economic situation. In particular, countries with larger external and internal imbalances during the low interest rate period faced larger currency depreciations when interest rate expectations for advanced economies tightened. ...