Does short-term debt increase vulnerability to financial crisis, or does short-term debt reflect -- rather than cause -- the incipient crisis? We study the role that short-term debt played in the collapse of the East Asian financial sector in 1997-1998. We alleviate concerns about the...

Credit market freezes in which debt issuance declines dramatically and market liquidity evaporates are typically observed during financial crises. In the financial crisis of 2008-09, the structured credit market froze, issuance of corporate bonds declined, and secondary credit markets became...