Bad Investments and Missed Opportunities? Postwar Capital Flows to Asia and Latin America
研究发现，二战后资本流向增长缓慢的拉美而非快速增长的亚洲，主要原因是劳动市场扭曲抑制了投资激励，而非资本市场问题。
After World War II, international capital flowed into slow-growing Latin America rather than fast-growing Asia. This is surprising as, everything else equal, fast growth should imply high capital returns. This paper develops a capital flow accounting framework to quantify the role of different factor market distortions in producing these patterns. Surprisingly, we find that distortions in labor markets, rather than domestic or international capital markets, account for the bulk of these flows. Labor market distortions that indirectly depress investment incentives by lowering equilibrium labor supply explain two-thirds of observed flows, while improvement in these distortions over time accounts for much of Asia's rapid growth.