I. Recent Currency Crises A salient fact of Mexico’s and Thailand’s recent currency crises is the active role played by the monetary authority in contributing to the loss of reserves. In both cases, domestic credit showed a sizable increase, driven in part by central bank loans to the financial sector. This stands in sharp contrast with the standard economist’s model in which the proximate caus...

In this paper we develop an early warning system of currency crises based on the Markov switching methodology. Constructed data on speculative pressure from six Asian countries indicate that currency crises are mainly captured through volatility effects. Based on an extensive survey, we test potential determinants of exiting the tranquil state and find a number of variables with significant med...

or insolvent. Such crises have recurred throughout the history of capitalism. A collapse in investor confidence, usually after a period of market euphoria, marks such crises—examples include the Dutch tulip mania crisis of 1637–38, the Indian cotton futures market crash of 1866, and the Great Depression of 1929. When foreign lenders are involved, cross-border payments problems arise as well. Th...

Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta E C O N O M I C R E V I E W First Quarter 2004 I n recent years, capital restrictions in emerging markets have been substantially reduced. As a result, international financial flows to these countries have risen. Most emerging markets have adopted a pegged exchange rate system in which central banks are committed to keeping their domestic currency in terms of the...

•= Policy credibility Countries where policy makers have historically suffered from a lack of policy credibility, especially in the monetary area, may benefit from the discipline imposed by a rule-based monetary regime such as a currency board or dollarization. The inability of discretionary policy makers to credibly commit to monetary stability and discipline has been suggested as one of the s...

This paper empirically examines whether de facto exchange rate regimes affect the occurrence of currency crises in 84 countries over the 1980–2001 period by using the probit model. We employ the de facto classification of Reinhart and Rogoff (2004) that allows us to estimate the impact of relatively long-lived exchange rate regimes on currency crises with much greater precision. We find that pe...

This paper analyzes the feasibility of various types of currency unions, such as a dollar bloc, Euro bloc, Yen bloc, and basket currency bloc in East Asia, and empirically estimates welfare effects of a currency union for East Asian economies. Judging from optimum currency area (OCA) criteria, including the symmetry of output and price shocks across countries, commitment to price stability, and...

The recent financial turmoils in Latin America and Europe have led to a concatenation of several events from currency, banking and sovereign debt crises. This paper proposes a multivariate dynamic probit model that encompasses the three types of crises ’currency, banking and sovereign debt’ and allows us to investigate the potential causality between all three crises. To achieve this objective,...

financial markets over the last decade, large capital flow reversals can occur quite quickly, considerably shortening the time policymakers have to respond. As a consequence, and motivated in part by the recent crises in Europe (1992), Mexico (1994–95), and Asia (1997–98), researchers are taking a fresh look at the determinants of currency and banking crises and are attempting to develop early ...