In this paper we first trace the changing nature of banking, currency and debt crises from the last century to the present. Each type of crisis has transmogrified in the presence of official intervention and the creation of a safety net. A similar pattern is observed for international rescue...

What is the role of foreign currency debt in precipitating financial crises? In this paper we compare the 1880 to 1913 period to recent experience. We examine debt crises, currency crises, banking crises and the interrelation between these varieties of crises. We pay special attention to the...

In this paper we compare various characteristics of the cross-country transmission of shocks in the financial markets of both advanced and emerging countries during two periods of globalization -- the pre-World War I classical gold standard era, 1880-1914, and the post-Bretton Woods era,...

The process of central bank (CB) evolution by emerging market economies (EMEs), including central bank independence (CBI) and transparency (CBT), converged towards that of the advanced economies (AEs) before the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2007-2008. It was greatly aided by the adoption of...

We argue that recent currency crises reflect clashes between fundamentals and pegged exchange rates, just as did crises in the past. We reject the view that crises reflect self-fulfilling prophecies that are not closely related to measured fundamentals. Doubts about the timing of a market attack...

An analogy has been made between the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971 and the recent Eurozone crisis. The build up of TARGET balances in the Eurosystem of Central Banks after 2007 with the GIPS (deficit countries having large liabilities) and Germany (a surplus country) with large...

In this paper, we examine the IMF's role in maintaining the access of emerging market economies to international capital markets. We find evidence that both macroeconomic aggregates and capital flows improve following the adoption of an IMF program, although they may initially deteriorate...