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Expectations and contagion in self-fulfilling currency attacks
This paper presents a model in which currency crises can spread across countries as a result of the self-fulfilling beliefs of market participants. An incomplete-information approach is used to overcome many undesirable features of existing multiple-equilibrium explanations of contagion. If speculators expect contagion across markets to occur, they have an incentive to trade in both currency markets to take advantage of this correlation. These actions, in turn, link the two markets in such a way that a sharp devaluation of one currency will be propagated to the other market, fulfilling the ...
Working Paper
Corporate dollar debt and depreciations: much ado about nothing?
Much has been written recently about the problems for emerging markets that might result from a mismatch between foreign-currency denominated liabilities and assets (or income flows) denominated in local currency. In particular, several models, developed in the aftermath of financial crises of the late 1990s, suggest that the expansion in the "peso" value of "dollar" liabilities resulting from a devaluation could, via a net-worth effect, offset the expansionary competitiveness effect. Assessing which effect dominates, however, is ultimately an empirical matter. In this vein, we construct ...
Working Paper
Effects of devaluation with a partial wage floor
Journal Article
Delayed financial disclosure: Mexico's recent experience
This article documents a delay in the public release of Mexican international reserve data in the months before Mexico's debt crisis at the end of 1994. The article establishes that in that year investors did not know the level of Mexican reserves before October; yet this lack of information did not seem to reduce investor confidence in the Mexican economy. The article does not establish whether the delay in releasing reserve data was due to logistical problems or to a government strategy. The possibility that the delay was strategic is evaluated by developing an economic model that captures ...
Working Paper
Banking and currency crises and systemic risk: a taxonomy and review
Many countries have experienced banking and currency crises in recent years. Although these crises appear to share many common causes and consequences, they have generally been analysed by different sets of economists. This paper develops a common framework, applies this framework to analysing recent crises, evaluates the historical evidence, and suggests potential solutions. Governments are identified as one of the major causes of the crises through first providing poorly structured financial guarantees that both increase fragility and misallocate resources, then pursuing unstable ...
Journal Article
The Mexican economic crisis: alternative views
The authors of this article suggest that many of the explanations for the 1994 crisis are based on questionable assumptions and dubious analysis. They contend that, when trying to explain the crisis, most authors have concentrated on the wrong economic "fundamentals." They challenge the conventional view that the crisis was caused by a combination of flawed fiscal, monetary, and exchange rate policies. Their explanation for the crisis belongs in an alternative camp that emphasizes the vulnerability of the Mexican financial system to swings in expectations and investor confidence. ; In their ...
Journal Article
Depreciation = inflation?
Journal Article
A predictable and avoidable Mexican meltdown
Working Paper
Convertibility risk, default risk, and the Mexdollar anomaly
Rogers (l992a,b) I put forth the convertibility risk hypothesis in order to explain the anomalous n~gative relationship between the expected rate of Mexican peso depreciation and the ratio of Mexdollars to peso denominated demand deposits. Recently, Gruben and Welch (1994) examine the effect of deteriorating bank loan quality on the variables I consider. Using a cointegration framework, the authors find (i) a negative relationship between non-performing loans and the dollarization ratio and (ii) the conventional positive relationship between expected peso depreciation and dollarization. The ...
Journal Article
Riding up the J curve