In the second half of the 90's negative effects of the financial relations globalization became evident. Amongst actions to reduce the risk of currency crisis we can mention solutions of a global nature and actions available to each country. The second group, apart from an adequate macroeconomic and structural policy, and enhanced quality of economic statistics, includes also a proper time sequence of the balance of payments capital account liberalization, including adoption of instruments that reduce the scale and types of international capital flows in an administrative way.

The analysis of effectiveness of such administrative constraints, counteracting excessive capital flows, is important in the context of the Polish economy for at least two reasons. For several years Poland has been experiencing substantial excess on the balance of payments capital account. Its anticipated scale may potentially represent an important source of the macroeconomic destabilization. On the other hand, new legal regulations introduced recently in Poland provide for administrative restrictions to be used in crisis to control capital flows.

The article describes prerequisites for the introduction of capital flow controls and specific instruments applied in the Chilean economy. Major prerequisites include: non-interest-bearing required deposits; dual currency market; time, quantity and quality limitations; and prudential regulations. Despite the broad range of instruments applied, empirical research only confirm the thesis on a short-term efficiency of the capital inflow control in respect of interest rate disparity and a decrease of short-term capital in foreign financing. The limitations applied did not affect total capital inflow and the exchange rate. Thus, Chilean economy experience shows that the system of capital flows control enhances macroeconomic policy autonomy and maintains external equilibrium to a minor extent. The extent to which it actually affected the structure of external debt it could have enhanced the financial sector stability and the economy's sustainability to disturbances in international financial markets.

Chilean economy experience may have interesting implications for eventual discussions on the application of similar instruments in the Polish economy. First of all they show that the introduction of capital flow control is more justified in the context of prudential than macroeconomic objectives. Administrative restrictions should be treated as supplementary to the tight macroeconomic policy, where the restrictive fiscal policy is a key element. Introduction of any control must depend on an efficient and comprehensive system of control for the balance of payments transaction purposes. Potential advantages should also be evaluated in the context of negative effects of capital flow control at the macro- and microeconomic levels.