Is capital really mobile across the border?

Abstract

The existing theories on capital mobility use either the saving–investment parity condition or the interest parity condition. The assumptions of balanced budget or purchasing power parity condition underlying these theories, however, are rarely met. This study, therefore develops a different approach called ‘current account surplus saving surplus parity condition’ to measure the degree of capital mobility and apply the model on US time series data. It is found that US capital is mobile internationally.