This paper argues that the recent Southeast Asian currency crisis was caused by large prospective deficits associated with implicit bailout guarantees to failing banking systems. We articulate this view using a simple dynamic general equilibrium model whose key feature is that a speculative...

Currency crises that coincide with banking crises tend to share four elements. First, governments provide guarantees to domestic and foreign bank creditors. Second, banks do not hedge their exchange rate risk. Third, there is a lending boom before the crises. Finally, when the currency/banking...

This paper investigates the response of real wages and hours worked to an exogenous shock in fiscal policy. We identify this shock with the dynamic response of government purchases and tax rates to an exogenous increase in military purchases. The fiscal shocks that we isolate are characterized...

This paper illustrates a particular limited information strategy for assessing the empirical plausibility of alternative quantitative general equilibrium business cycle models. The basic strategy is to test whether a model economy can account for the response of actual economy to an exogenous...

This paper explores the role played by government guarantees to banks’ foreigncreditors as a root cause of self-fulfilling twin banking-currency crises. We developa general equilibrium model in which such guarantees lead to these types of crises.Absent government guarantees, such crises are...

This paper argues that the recen Southeast Asian currency crisis was caused by large prospective deficits associated with implicit bailout guarantees to failing banking systems. We articulate this view using a simple dynamic general equilibrium model whose key feature is that a speculativ attack...