Portfolio capital flows before and after the Global Financial Crisis

The Global Financial Crisis had a substantial impact on the size and composition of portfolio capital flows, which raises the question whether the factors driving these capital flows have changed. The literature is scarce and shows mixed results, which may be attributable to the time windows used to compare the periods before and especially after the crisis. I identify and compare robust drivers of portfolio capital inflows for 75 countries in two non-overlapping periods (1996–2007 and 2011–19) using the Bayesian Model Averaging method. I find that in both periods, portfolio capital flows are driven by a similar combination of global and country-specific factors, consistent with the push-pull framework. However, the individual drivers change almost entirely in the post-GFC period, and demonstrate that investors focus more on risk for their international portfolio allocation.