Implications for the Adjustment Process of International Asset Risks: Exchange Controls, Intervention and Policy Risk, and Sovereign Risk

This paper analyzes the implications of international asset risks for the operation of the international adjustment process, with special emphasis on the scope for monetary policy. After a brief review of actual practice in the evaluation of country risk, the paper discusses a number of modifications in the standard theory of efficient international financial markets that are necessitated by the existence of country risk., For macroeconomic policy, the major implications are that domestic and foreign assets become imperfect substitutes and that world demand for domestic assets is likely to be less than perfectly elastic, even in the "small country" case, Even under a fixed exchange rate, a measure of domestic control over domestic interest rates therefore exists.