Capital Control Measures: A New Dataset

Abstract

We present and describe a new dataset of capital control restrictions on both inflows and outflows of ten categories of assets for 100 countries over the period 1995 to 2013. Building on the data first presented in Martin Schindler (2009), and other datasets based on the analysis of the IMF’s Annual Report on Exchange Arrangements and Exchange Restrictions, this dataset includes additional asset categories, more countries, and a longer time period. We discuss the manner in which we translate the information in the AREAER into a usable data set. We also characterize the data with respect to the prevalence of controls across asset categories, the correlation of controls across asset categories and between controls on inflows and controls on outflows, the aggregation of the separate categories into broader indicators, and the comparison of our dataset with other indicators of capital controls.