PORTFOLIO CAPITAL FLOWS - HOT OR COLD

A distinction is often made between short-term and long-term capital flows: the former are deemed unstable hot money and the latter are deemed stable cold money. Using time-series analysis of balance of payments data for five industrial and five developing countries, we find that in most cases the labels ''short-term'' and ''long-term'' do not provide any information about the time-series properties of the flow. In particular, long-term flows are often as volatile as short-term flows, and the time it takes for an unexpected shock to a flow to die out is similar across flows. Long-term flows are also at least as unpredictable as short-term flows, and knowledge of the type of flow does not improve the ability to forecast the aggregate capital account.