On VoxEU, Stefan Avdjiev, Robert McCauley, and Hyun Song Shin discuss how a focus on net capital flows between countries can mislead policy analysts if they neglect heterogeneity between sectors in a country and/or non-congruence of economic and currency area that is, if they assume the “triple coincidence” between economic area, decision-making unit, and currency area.

The triple coincidence misleads

because it obscures gross flows, …

in that it gives insufficient weight to international funding currencies that are extensively borrowed outside the borders of their home countries …

if it glosses over the relevant decision-making unit by aggregating too much.