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Notes on
The Chinn-Ito Financial Openness Index
2019 Update
August 26, 2021
Hiro Ito ([email protected])
Portland State University
Menzie Chinn ([email protected])
University of Wisconsin, Madison and NBER
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). This update is based on
AREAER 2020, which contains the information on regulatory restrictions on cross-border
financial transactions as of the end of 2019.
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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.
When you use the index, please acknowledge the following paper as the data source:
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 dataset is available at http://web.pdx.edu/~ito/Chinn-Ito_website.htm .
kaopen_2019.xls (Excel format) or kaopen_2019.dta (STATA 15 dataset format) is a data file
that contains the updated version of the Chinn and Ito index series. The dataset encompasses the
time period of 1970-2019 for 182 countries. In the dataset, cn refers to IMF-World Bank three-
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Not all the countries report their regulatory controls as of the end of the year of concern. For each country, the
report stipulates the date as of which the data are based.
