The entire difference between a mild downturn and a devastating crisis is the occurrence of sharp fire sales of domestic assets and possibly foreign exchange and the ensuing collapse in the balance sheets of both the financial and nonfinancial sector. Why and how do such crises materialize? And...

We first illustrate that emerging markets (EMs) face a shortage of financial assets, with financial assets not growing as rapidly as domestic savings. We then estimate the asset shortage in EMs for 1995-2008. We develop a model that explains how asset shortage develop, and then econometrically...

We assess econometrically the impact of asset shortages on economic growth, asset bubbles, the probability of a crisis, and the current account for a group of 41 Emerging markets for 1995-2008. The econometric estimations confirm that asset shortages pose a serious danger to EMs in terms of...