Predicting the timing of currency and banking crises is likely to remain an elusive task for academics, financial market participants, and policymakers. Few foresaw the Asian crises and fewer still could have imagined their severity. However, recent events have highlighted the importance of...

Primary commodities still account for the bulk of exports in many developing countries. However, real commodity prices have been declining almost continuously since the early 1980s. The appropriate policy response to a terms of trade shock depends importantly on whether the shock is perceived to...

During the 1990s a number of developing countries have introduced a variety of measures designed to curb capital inflows. Many of these measures were either used countercyclically, announced as temporary, or de facto became so because agents found means to circumvent the restrictions. This paper...

One plausible mechanism through which financial market shocks may propagate across countries is through the effect of past gains and losses on investors' risk aversion. The paper first presents a simple model examining how heterogeneous changes in investors' risk aversion affects portfolio...

For the first time since the onset of the debt crisis in the slimmer or 1982, capital began to return to Latin America during 1990 and 1991.In general, Latin America's re-entry into the international capital markets was perceived as a positive development. However, policy-makers in the region...

This paper describes the current episode of capital inflows to several Asian economies, summarizing the principal facts, the impact of the inflows, and policy options.25 The discussion also covers, when relevant, the similar experiences of Latin American countries, with an emphasis on the policy...

At the time of writing there were widespread concerns about the health of the U.S. economy. There is conclusive evidence that the pace of growth has slowed, which has prompted the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates on two occasions (a total of 100 basis points thus far). As usual, when faced...

Comments on: Alan Drazen, whose paper represents a first effort to formalize the role of political considerations in the process of how currency crises are transmitted across international borders. The theoretical literature on “contagion” is scarce, and the empirical literature equally so....

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More frequent and increasingly severe crises are encouraging emerging market economies to seek means to make themselves less vulnerable to sudden stops in capital flows. Capital controls have been widely discussed, but dollarization may offer a longer-term and more market-friendly solution.