This paper investigates currency and financial crises in an optimizing general equilibrium model. It is shown that a rise in current and expected future budget deficits generates a real exchange rate appreciation and a decumulation of external assets, leading up to a currency crisis when foreign reserves approximate a critical level. Strong empirical support for our model is obtained by a probi...

abstract financial crises and currency instabilities within developing and emerging economies during the last decade had a tremendous impact on the economic performance and increased vulnerability of economies against domestic and foreign shocks. the timing of capital liberalization is one of the significant debates among other issues related to currency instability, and it would be more conven...

In this paper I discuss in what way, if any, the collapse of Argentina’s experience with a currency board has affected the policy debate on the appropriate exchange rate regime in emerging and transition countries. More specifically, I deal with three issues: (1) I discuss some important aspects of the Argentine experience; (2) I provide a comparative evaluation of economic performance under st...

Several empirical studies are concerned with measuring the effect of currency and current account crises on economic growth. Using different empirical models this paper serves two aspects. It provides an explicit assessment of country specific factors influencing the costs of crises in terms of economic growth and controls via a treatment type model for possible sample selection governing the o...

We use a panel of annual data for over one hundred developing countries from 1971 through 1992 to characterize currency crashes. We define a currency crash as a large change of the nominal exchange rate that is also a substantial increase in the rate of change of nominal depreciation. We examine the composition of the debt as well as its level, and a variety of other macroeconomic factors, exte...

Recent emerging market crises have emphasized the fluctuating character of trade’s reaction after financial crises, in contradiction with the apparently simple theoretical impact of such events on trade, which is essentially described by the well-known J-curve mechanism.. We use a gravity-like equation to assess the impact of these events on bilateral sectoral trade and reveal the elements whic...

We develop a model of currency crises, in which traders are heterogeneously informed, and interest rates are endogenously determined in a noisy rational expectations equilibrium. In our model, multiple equilibria result from distinct roles an interest rate plays in determining domestic asset market allocations and the devaluation outcome. Except for special cases, this finding is not affected b...

This paper develops a fully microfounded two-sector DGE model for a small open economy subject to credit market imperfections (CMIs) and balance sheet problems (due to the presence of a currency mismatch). Specifically, some agents in this economy face credit constraints to finance investment due to information asymmetries and, while their assets are denominated in the domestic currency, their ...

What determines the direction of spread of currency crises? We examine data on waves of currency crises in 1992, 1994, 1997, and 1998 to evaluate several hypotheses on the determinants of contagion. We simultaneously consider trade competition, financial links, and institutional similarity to the “ground-zero” country as potential drivers of contagion. To overcome data limitations and account f...

We study the dynamics linking monetary policy with bank leverage and show that adjustments in leverage act as the linchpin in the monetary transmission mechanism that works through uctuations in risk-taking. Motivated by the evidence, we formulate a model of the “risk-taking channel” of monetary policy in the international context that rests on the feedback loop between increased leverage of gl...