This paper provides an asymmetric information analysis of the recent East Asian crisis. It then outlines several lessons from this crisis. First, there is a strong rationale for an international lender of last resort. Second, without appropriate conditionality for this lending, the moral hazard...

This paper focuses on the 1995 Latin American and 1997 East Asian crises using an insurance-based model of financial crises. First the model of Dooley (forthcoming) is described. Second, some empirical evidence for an insurance model is presented. The key variables in this approach include the...

The paper proposes a two-step approach to assessing the extent to which the fall in credit in crisis-stricken East Asian countries was a supply- or demand-induced phenomenon. The first step is based on the estimation of a demand function for excess liquid assets by commercial banks. Such a...

A model of financial crises in emerging markets based on problems of agency in financial intermediation is developed. This model generates dynamic relationships between foreign capital inflows, domestic investment and domestic bank debt in an endogenous growth model. As a consequence of loan...

I implement two major approaches to identifying the equilibrium exchange rate. First, the concept of purchasing power parity is tested and used to define the equilibrium real exchange rate for the Indonesian rupiah, Korean won, Malaysian ringgit, Philippine peso, Singapore dollar, Taiwanese...

We examine labor market integration in east and southeast Asia (ESEA) during the 1980s, focusing on intraregional labor mobility and on the two other main channels of integration: capital mobility and trade. We find evidence that labor market integration increased sharply among ESEA countries in...

We examine the generalizability of internally valid estimates of causal effects in a fixed population over time when that population is subject to aggregate shocks. This temporal external validity is shown to depend upon the distribution of the aggregate shocks and the interaction between these...

Ethnic Chinese networks, as proxied by the product of ethnic Chinese population shares, are found in 1980 and 1990 to have increased bilateral trade both within Southeast Asia and for other country pairs. Their effects within Southeast Asia are much greater for differentiated than for...

The cross-country variation in the severity of the crisis was largely determined by three fundamentals: the strength of the banking system, the real appreciation, and the international liquidity of the country. We also find that the rule that links fundamentals to the crisis severity has been...

Motivated by the historically tense geopolitical situation in Southeast Asia, we simulate the potential closure of key maritime waterways in the region to predict the impact on trade and welfare. We generate initial (unobstructed) and counterfactual (rerouted) least-cost maritime paths between...