扩大跨境流动限制的格局：现代工具和历史视角

Expanding the Landscapeof Cross-Border FlowRestrictions: ModernTools and HistoricalPerspectives Katharina Bergant, Andrés Fernández, Ken Teoh, and MartínUribe WP/26/98 IMF Working Papersdescribe research inprogress by the author(s) and are published toelicit comments and to encourage debate.The views expressed in IMF Working Papers arethose of the author(s) and do not necessarilyrepresent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board,or IMF management. 2026MAY IMF Working PaperResearch Department Expanding the Landscape of Cross-Border Flow Restrictions: Modern Tools and HistoricalPerspectivesPrepared by Katharina Bergant, Andrés Fernández, Ken Teoh, and Martín Uribe* Authorized for distribution by Maria Soledad Martinez PeriaMay2026 IMF Working Papersdescribe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicitcomments and to encourage debate.The views expressed in IMF Working Papers are those of theauthor(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management. ABSTRACT:Employing large language models to analyze official documents, we construct a comprehensiverecord of daily changes in de jure restrictions on cross-border flows worldwide since the 1950s. Our analysisuncovers the wide array of instruments used to regulate cross-border financial flows over the past seven decades,leveraging the fine granularity of the new measures to characterize cross-country and time-series variation acrosseight categories of restrictions —- distinguishing by flow, direction, instrument type, intensity, and overall policystance. We exploit the high frequency nature of the new data to document novel patterns in the use of theserestrictions, as well as their relationship to crises and political economy determinants. Expanding the Landscape ofCross-Border Flow Restrictions:Modern Tools and HistoricalPerspectives Prepared by Katharina Bergant, Ken Teoh, Adriano Fernandes, and MartinUribe 1Introduction Periods of heightened geopolitical tension and financial fragmentation have revivedfundamental questions about how governments manage international financial flows.Recording the full landscape of cross-border restrictions—spanning current-accountmeasures, foreign-exchange market regulations, financial-sector provisions, andcapital-account instruments—is essential for understanding how countries have de-ployed these measures in a historical context, especially during periods of economicstress. Despite a long literature documenting specific facets of capital controls, em-pirical analysis has remained constrained by data that capture only a narrow subsetof instruments, typically at low frequency, often unable to distinguish between in-and outflow measures or different intensities of measures. Consequently, we stilllack systematic evidence on how policymakers use the broader set of cross-bordermeasures in practice and what motivates their deployment. This paper addresses these gaps in two ways. First, by introducing a new datasetthat substantially expands the documented universe of cross-border restrictions.1Applying modern machine learning and artificial intelligence tools to the full textof the IMF’s Annual Report on Exchange Arrangements and Exchange Restrictions(AREAER), we record over 40,000 policy changes across 195 countries from 1950 tothe present, classified by instrument type, direction (inflow versus outflow), andwhether each action tightens or eases restrictions—at a daily frequency. This ap-proach yields a considerably richer measure of financial liberalization than existingindicators, most of which begin in the 1990s and therefore fail to capture the largestepisode of countries’ financial opening.Second, we extensively document howand why countries deploy these measures—across time, across instruments, andespecially during periods of crisis. Capital account restrictions—the focus of theexisting literature—constitute only a subset of the vast toolkit that policymakers haveused to regulate cross-border flows; current account measures, foreign exchangemarket regulations, and financial sector provisions have all played significant roles,particularly in earlier decades. Furthermore, policymakers tend to deploy these instruments in packages ratherthan in isolation, with more than three-quarters of measures occurring within a 30-day window of at least one other action. We find that the use of such policy packages rises markedly during crisis episodes, when countries more than double their typicalpace of restrictions and shift disproportionately toward tightening outflow controls.Finally, a systematic analysis of official motivations for a subset of macro-critical mea-sures reveals that while most controls are driven by macroeconomic concerns—fearof disruptive outflows, exchange rate management, or overborrowing—roughlyone-third are motivated by longer-term objectives such as financial liberalization orgeopolitical considerations. Our data source is the IMF’s AR