Emerging market countries that have improved institutions and attained intermediate levels of institutional quality have experienced severe financial crises following capital flow reversals. However, there is also evidence that countries with strong institutions and deep capital markets are less...

The global financial crisis of 2007-09 has led to an intensive research program analyzing a wide range of issues related to financial crises. This paper presents a summary of a forthcoming book, Financial Crises: Causes, Consequences, and Policy Responses, that includes 19 contributions...

Foreign currency debt is widely believed to increase risks of financial crisis, especially after being implicated as a cause of the East Asian crisis in the late 1990s. In this paper, we study the effects of foreign currency debt on currency and debt crises and its indirect effects on short-term...

Although most CIS and East Asian countries are de jure classified as free floaters, they de facto pursue (tight) dollar pegs. This paper emphasizes dollar denomination of shortterm and long-term payment flows as reasons for exchange rate stabilization. Based on the analysis of ‚competitive...

We use household survey data from Hungary to analyse the determinants of foreign currency (FX) borrowing. We do not find evidence that Hungarian FX borrowers are better educated, wealthier or more risk-loving than their peers. In fact, FX borrowing is a common phenomenon driven mostly by...

In the early 2000s, many developing countries in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia presented substantial corporate dollar debts. This paper suggests an explanation for this worrisome phenomenon, which builds on the traditional signaling approach. The model brings into the picture specific...

Understanding differences in business cycle phenomena between Emerging Market Economies (EMEs) and industrialized countries has been at the center of recent research on macroeconomic fluctuations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the importance of certain credit market imperfections...