This paper addresses the issue of the assessment of foreign exchange and capital controls in the context of the Southern African Development Community's goal of regional integration. It reviews the pros and cons of current and capital account liberalisation and argues that there is a lack of sufficiently refined de jure measures of capital account openness. A new index for measuring exchange control restrictiveness is created based on data from the International Monetary Fund's Annual Report on Exchange Arrangements and Exchange Restrictions (AREAER) for the 15 SADC member states. This index is unique in that it employs ordinal measures of exchange control restrictions rather than the binary measures used in previous measures. The new index illustrates the considerable range of variation of exchange restrictiveness within SADC, as well as illustrating SADC's relative exchange restrictiveness compared with other countries, inside and outside of Africa. The new index also correlates with several measures of financial development, certain balance of payment items, and some measures of institutional development, which makes it a useful measure for SADC integration. The paper highlights the challenges for SADC monetary union in the sphere of exchange control.

中文翻译：

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测量SADC交换控制限制的新指标

本文以南部非洲发展共同体的区域一体化目标为背景，探讨了外汇和资本管制评估问题。它回顾了经常账户和资本账户自由化的利弊，并认为缺乏足够完善的法律上的资本账户开放措施。根据国际货币基金组织针对南共体15个成员国的《外汇安排和汇兑限制年度报告》（AREAER）中的数据，创建了衡量汇兑管制限制的新指数。该指数的独特之处在于它采用了外汇管制限制的有序措施，而不是先前措施中使用的二元措施。新指数说明了SADC内的交易限制变化幅度很大，并说明了南部非洲发展共同体与非洲境内外其他国家相比的相对汇兑限制。新指数还与金融发展的若干衡量指标，某些国际收支项目以及制度发展的衡量指标相关联，这使其成为南共体一体化的有用衡量指标。本文着重强调了南共体货币联盟在汇率控制领域所面临的挑战。