This paper develops an interpretation of the Asian meltdown focused on moral hazard as the common source of overinvestment, excessive external borrowing, and current account deficits. To the extent that foreign creditors are willing to lend to domestic agents against future bail-out revenue from...

The paper explores the view that the Asian currency and financial crises in 1997 and 1998 reflected structural and policy distortions in the countries of the region, even if market overreaction and herding caused the plunge of exchange rates, asset prices, and economic activity to be more severe...

This paper investigates the relationship between international capital liberalization and exchange rate volatility. While the effects of a capital controls liberalization on the transaction volume in the foreign exchange market are theoretically unambiguous, the effects on the volatility of...

The paper explores the view that the Asian currency and financial crises in 1997 and 1998 reflected structural and policy distortions in the countries of the region, even if market overreaction and herding caused the plunge of exchange rates, asset prices, and economic activity to be more severe...

It is often argued that the provision of liquidity by the international institutions such as the IMF to countries experiencing balance of payment problems can have catalytic effects on the behavior of international financial markets, i.e., it can reduce the scale of liquidity runs by inducing...

This paper analyzes the trade-off between official liquidity provision and debtor moral hazard ininternational financial crises. In the model, crises are caused by the interaction of bad fundamentals,self-fulfilling runs and policies by three classes of optimizing agents: international...

It is often argued that the provision of liquidity by the international institutions such as the IMF to countries experiencing balance of payment problems can have catalytic effects on the behavior of international financial markets, i.e., it can reduce the scale of liquidity runs by inducing...

The Finnish fiscal balances severely deteriorated during the deep recession of the early 1990s with large fiscal deficits and significant increases in the public debt to GDP ratio. On the external side, current account deficits led to a large accumulation of external debt. While part of the...

In this paper we evaluate internationally agreed limits on public sector debt and deficits, such as those agreed by the EC countries in the Treaty of Maastricht as preconditions for membership in a monetary union. These fiscal convergence criteria require that general government budget deficits...