The Chinn-Ito Index

– A de jure measure of financial openness –

University of Wisconsin, Madison and NBER

Portland State University

Now Updated to 2021!

(11/14/2023)

The Chinn-Ito index (KAOPEN) is an index measuring a country's degree of capital account openness. The index was initially introduced in Chinn and Ito (Journal of Development Economics, 2006). KAOPEN is based on the binary dummy variables that codify the tabulation of restrictions on cross-border financial transactions reported in the IMF's Annual Report on Exchange Arrangements and Exchange Restrictions (AREAER).

Now, the index is updated to 2021.

The dataset is available in the Excel or STATA format (STATA 15 dataset format). The data file contains the Chinn and Ito index series for the time period of 1970-2021 for 182 countries. A complete list of the countries and their data availability and summary statistics are presented in the "Note on the Chinn-Ito Financial Openness Index."

When you use the index, please acknowledge the following paper as the data source:

More information on how the index is constructed and how it compares with other measures of cross-border financial flows can be found in:

"A New Measure of Financial Openness", Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, Volume 10, Issue 3 September 2008, p. 309 - 322. Note that this paper uses the 2007 version of the dataset (containing data up to only 2005), which will differ from the current version of the dataset.

Disclaimer: We are not responsible for the results of the estimations that use the index. Although the index is based on the information released by the International Monetary Fund, the index is not associated with the Fund. All the errors of the index are the authors' own. All rights reserved.

If you still have questions after reading the Note, please contact Hiro Ito (ito@pdx.edu).

The trilemma indexes (Aizenman, Chinn, Ito, 2008) are also available here.

Please note that the KAOPEN index for the trilemma index dataset is normalized to range b/w zero and one.

Related Literature

Chinn, Menzie D. and Hiro Ito (2008). "A New Measure of Financial Openness". Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, Volume 10, Issue 3, p. 309 – 322 (September).

Ito, Hiro (2006). "Financial Development in Asia: Thresholds, Institutions, and the Sequence of Liberalization". North American Journal of Economics and Finance, issue 17(3) (December).

Chinn, Menzie D. and Hiro Ito (2006)."What Matters for Financial Development? Capital Controls, Institutions, and Interactions," Journal of Development Economics, Volume 81, Issue 1, Pages 163-192 (October). The longer version is available as NBER Working Paper No. 11370 (May 2005). The previous version is "Capital Account Liberalization, Institutions and Financial Development: Cross Country Evidence," (with Menzie Chinn) NBER Working Paper Series, #8967 (June 2002).

International Monetary Fund (2010, various years). Annual Report on Exchange Arrangements and Exchange Restrictions (AREAER), Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund.

Updated on November 14, 2023