IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/17012.html

News, Sentiment and Capital Flows

Author

Listed:
  • Benhima, Kenza
  • Cordonier, Rachel

Abstract

We examine empirically the effect of two types of shocks related to expectations - "news" (increases in expected future productivity) and "sentiment" (surges in optimism unrelated to future productivity) - on gross capital flows. These two shocks together explain more than 80% of the variation in gross capital flows at all horizons, with the largest part being due to sentiment shocks. Both shocks drive a positive correlation between gross inflows and outflows but only sentiments shocks generate procyclical gross flows. We show that sentiment shocks are not accounted for by financial, monetary or uncertainty shocks, nor are they purely global. The empirical effect of news and sentiment shocks constitute a challenge to most theories of capital flows, but are consistent with the existence of asymmetric information between domestic and foreign investors about the country's fundamentals.

Suggested Citation

  • Benhima, Kenza & Cordonier, Rachel, 2022. "News, Sentiment and Capital Flows," CEPR Discussion Papers 17012, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:17012
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP17012
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Simiso Msomi & Paul-Francios Muzindutsi, 2025. "Exchange Rates, Supply Chain Activity/Disruption Effects, and Exports," Forecasting, MDPI, vol. 7(1), pages 1-14, February.
    3. Benhima, Kenza & Bolliger, Elio, 2022. "Do Local Forecasters Have Better Information?," MPRA Paper 117072, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Sep 2023.
    4. Yang, Yang & Tang, Yanling & Zhang, Ren & Wu, Li, 2023. "Investigating the impact of technology and noise shocks on capital flows," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).
    5. Paul Luk & Tianxiao Zheng, 2020. "Foreign Direct Investment and Debt Financing in Emerging Economies," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 52(4), pages 863-905, June.
    6. Xinqian Du & Tian Pu, 2025. "U.S. economic uncertainty shocks and extreme capital flows episodes: An empirical analysis of emerging and developing economies," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(1), pages 352-368, January.
    7. Armelius, Hanna & Bertsch, Christoph & Hull, Isaiah & Zhang, Xin, 2020. "Spread the Word: International spillovers from central bank communication," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    8. Choi, Sangyup & Ciminelli, Gabriele & Furceri, Davide, 2023. "Is domestic uncertainty a local pull factor driving foreign capital inflows? New cross-country evidence," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    9. He, Hongbo & Chen, Yiqing & Ou, Jinghua & Yao, Shujie, 2025. "Investing in relative market positions in interconnected financial markets: A strategy for international portfolio diversification," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • F32 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Current Account Adjustment; Short-term Capital Movements

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:17012. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.