The conventional wisdom is that crises are largely due to swings in short-term capital (mainly bank loans in the case of East Asia). Hence economies that finance their current account deficits mainly via foreign direct investment (FDI) are seen as being less susceptible to a crisis. The spate of...

The third generation genre of currency crises models that have been popularized following the recent crises inemerging economies give prominence to the capital account. Hence, they are also commonly referred to as 'capital crisis models'. These models provide the theoretical rationale and...

Given its potentially global significance and the attention that there tends to be towards things that go wrong, it is hardly surprising that most of the literature dealing with economic events in East Asia during recent years has concentrated on the crisis period of 1997 and 1998. This work has...

The availability of bilateral capital flows between countries has given rise to a number of papers attempting to understand trends and determinants of capital flows between country pairs. Almost without exception, the papers find that the gravity model fits the data quite well. Specifically,...

The literature on the East Asian crisis has concentrated almost exclusively on the five crisis-hit economies of Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines (Asia-5). Relatively scant attention has been paid to the twin cities of Hong Kong and Singapore, both of which also suffered...

This paper develops a simple model to examine the reasons behind the capital inflow surges into selected Asian economies in the 1990s prior to the financial crisis of 1997-98. The simple analytical model reveals that persistent uncovered interest differentials and consequent capital inflows may...

This paper explores the case for an Asian Monetary Fund (AMF) in light of the East Asian crisis. It discusses the role of such a regional facility, and attempts to clarify important issues such as its functional relationship to the IMF. Available evidence stresses that contagion is largely a...

Increasing capital inflows and sustained interest rate spreads were important features in East Asia prior to the crisis of 1997-98. But why did capital inflows fail to eliminate interest rate differentials? Why were inflows associated with rising domestic interest rates that then perpetuated the...

This paper examines Thailand's exchange rate policy, focusing on the degree of the country's real exchange rate misalignment pre-crisis, and their consequent effects on Thailand's trade balance with its two large trading partners, the US and Japan. We estimate misalignment as the difference...

Most analyses of the East Asian financial crisis have focused on its causes and the links between currency and banking crises. However a related question is what happens in the aftermath of a crisis? What factors determine the path of an economy in the post-devaluation phase? Does it swiftly...