In third generation currency crises models, balance sheet losses from currency depreciations propagate the crises into the real sector of the economy. To test these models, we built a firm-level database that allowed us to measure currency mismatches around the 2002 Brazilian currency crisis. We...

In third generation currency crises models, balance sheet losses from currency depreciations propagate the crises into the real sector of the economy. To test these models, we built a firm-level database that allowed us to measure currency mismatches around the 2002 Brazilian currency crisis. We...

We use a panel of annual data for over one hundred developing countries from 1971 through 1992 to characterize currency crashes. We define a currency crash as a large change of the nominal exchange rate that is also a substantial increase in the rate of change of nominal depreciation. We examine...

First generation models of speculative attacks show that apparently random speculative attacks on policy regimes can be fully consistent with rational and well-informed speculative behavior. Unfortunately, models driven by a conflict between exchange rate policy and other macroeconomic...

We propose a model that solves the crucial disconnect between business cycle models that treat default risk as an exogenous interest rate on working capital, and sovereign default models that treat output fluctuations as an exogenous process with ad-hoc default costs. The model explains observed...

The purpose of this paper is to show that macroeconomic impacts might be very different depending on what strategy developing countries will take. In the first part, we investigate what macroeconomic impacts an increased aversion to liquidity risk can have in a simple open economy model. When...

We study determinants and consequences of sharp reductions in current account" imbalances (reversals) in low- and middle-income countries. We try to answer two questions:" first, what triggers reversals? Second, what factors explain how costly reversals are? We find" that both domestic...

This paper confronts the traditional balance-of-payments (BoP) analytical framework (with its dominant focus on the size of a given country’s current account imbalance and its external liabilities) with the contemporary realities of highly integrated international capital markets and...

Despite the extensive work on currency mismatches, research on the significance of maturity mismatches in emerging market countries is scarce. In this paper, I show that emerging market banks' maturity mismatches increase during periods of high capital inflows, and that banks with high maturity...

A key precursor of twentieth-century financial crises in emerging and advanced economies alike was the rapid buildup of leverage. Those emerging economies that avoided leverage booms during the 2000s also were most likely to avoid the worst effects of the twenty-first century’s first global...