Preventing Currency Crises In Emerging Markets

Economists and policymakers are still trying to understand the lessons recent financial crises in Asia and other emerging market countries hold for the future of the global financial system. In this timely and important volume, distinguished academics, officials in multilateral organizations, and public and private sector economists explore the causes of and effective policy responses to international currency crises. Topics covered include exchange rate regimes, contagion (transmission of currency crises across countries), the current account of the balance of payments, the role of private sector investors and of speculators, the reaction of the official sector (including the multilaterals), capital controls, bank supervision and weaknesses, and the roles of cronyism, corruption, and large players (including hedge funds). Ably balancing detailed case studies, cross-country comparisons, and theoretical concerns, this book will make a major contribution to ongoing efforts to understand and prevent international currency crises.

The management of financial crises in emerging markets is a vital and high-stakes challenge in an increasingly global economy. For this reason, it's also a highly contentious issue in today's public policy circles. In this book, leading economists-many of whom have also participated in policy debates on these issues-consider how best to reduce the frequency and cost of such crises. The contributions here explore the management process from the beginning of a crisis to the long-term effects of the techniques used to minimize it. The first three chapters focus on the earliest responses and the immediate defense of a currency under attack, exploring whether unnecessary damage to economies can be avoided by adopting the right response within the first few days of a financial crisis. Next, contributors examine the adjustment programs that follow, considering how to design these programs so that they shorten the recovery phase, encourage economic growth, and minimize the probability of future difficulties. Finally, the last four papers analyze the actual effects of adjustment programs, asking whether they accomplish what they are designed to do-and whether, as many critics assert, they impose disproportionate costs on the poorest members of society. Recent high-profile currency crises have proven not only how harmful they can be to neighboring economies and trading partners, but also how important policy responses can be in determining their duration and severity. Economists and policymakers will welcome the insightful evaluations in this important volume, and those of its companion, Sebastian Edwards and Jeffrey A. Frankel's Preventing Currency Crises in Emerging Markets.

Currency Crises in Emerging Markets, prepared by Warsaw-based Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE), discusses various aspects of currency crises in emerging-market economies: The definitions and theoretical models of currency crises, the causes, management and propagation (contagion effect) of crises, their economic, social and policy consequences, the role of international financial institutions, and crisis prevention. In addition, five case studies of currency crises in Central and Eastern Europe are presented.

This is the introductory chapter to an NBER conference volume that examined the lessons to be drawn from the financial and currency crises of the late 1990s. The paper does not attempt to summarize the specific content of that meeting but provides the author's personal conclusions about crisis prevention and management. The first part of the paper deals with policies of the emerging market economies that affect the likelihood of crises, including exchange rate regimes, capital account convertibility, foreign exchange liabilities and reserves, domestic credit structure, and financial supervision. The paper then considers policies of industrial countries that affect the risk of crises in emerging market economies, including exchange rate instability, interest rates, banking supervision, trade policy, and the provision of a lender of last resort facility. The second half of the paper deals with the way that the crises were managed by the IMF and attempts to answer the following questions: (1) Have the crises been resolved, permitting the crisis countries to return to solid economic growth and to achieve renewed access to international capital markets? (2) Did the IMF stabilization policies resolve the crisis with as little economic pain as possible? (3) Did the agreed structural reforms actually occur and, if so, were they successful? (4) How did the experience of the crisis countries affect the incentives of lenders, borrowers, and countries facing crises in the future? (5) Were the actions of the IMF politically legitimate for an international agency? (6) What were the political consequences of the crises and the policies that followed?

In recent years we have seen a growing number of banking and financial crises in emerging market countries, with great costs to their economies. But we now have a much better understanding of why these crises occur and a better idea how they can be prevented.

Tiivistelmä.

Since 1990, major banking and current crises have occurred in many countries throughout the world - including Mexico and Latin America in 1994-95, East Asia in 1997-98, and Russia and Brazil in 1998 - with large costs both to the individual countries experiencing the crises and to other nations. As a result, considerable effort has been expended by economists and policymakers to identify the causes of these crises and to design programs with the aim both of preventing similar crises from occurring in the future, and of minimizing the costs when these do occur. These studies have cut across national boundaries, being undertaken by individual researchers and organizations in particular countries, as well as by international institutions. This book collects the papers and discussants' comments presented at a conference co-sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, and held in Chicago, in early October 1999. The purpose of the conference was to identify and discuss the lessons to be learned from these crises. Topics discussed included reviews of the crises in the individual countries and regions; analyses of the policy responses, both by the affected countries and by official international institutions; what has been learned from these crises; deposit insurance reform; the design of bank capital regulation; the role of bank supervision and regulation; and the future of official international financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The conference participants included a broad range of academic, industry, and regulatory experts from more than twenty-five countries. Because of the timeliness of the conference and the wide-ranging expertise of the participants, the papers in this book should be of significant interest both to students of financial crises and to domestic and international policymakers.