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Journal Article
Understanding recent crises in emerging markets
The world economy is going through a difficult and dangerous period. The recent Brazilian currency meltdown is one more in a series of events that includes the Asian crises of 1997-98 and the Mexican crash in 1994, and there is uncertainty about whether other emerging economies will be infected with the Brazilian virus. ; Dealing with crises in emerging economies is, therefore, an urgent matter. However, what to do about these crises is a source of heated debate. According to the author of this article, much of the confusion arises from the fact that accumulated knowledge about crises in ...
Journal Article
Policy priorities and the Mexican exchange rate crisis
Mexico's December 1994 devaluation and subsequent financial crisis came as a surprise even to some analysts who focus on Latin American financial markets. This article outlines the events leading up to the devaluation and discusses the tension that mounted throughout 1994 between policies to address growing banking-sector problems in Mexico, the policies designed to preserve the nation's exchange rate regime, and the pressures induced by rising U.S. interest rates. The article concludes that-while each difficulty impeded the resolution of the other-the explosive nature of the ensuing crisis ...
Journal Article
Mexico's crisis: looking back to assess the future
Mexico's most recent economic crisis took many in the international business community by surprise. In early December 1994, the Blue Chip consensus forecast for 1995 Mexican real GDP growth was 3.8 percent. A few weeks later, on December 20, the devaluation of the Mexican peso rocked international financial markets. What first appeared to be a minor correction in Mexico's nominal exchange rate quickly developed into a broader financial crunch felt in and outside Mexico. The Mexican government now expects the country's real GDP to fall about 3 percent in 1995; some private economists suggest ...
Journal Article
Sudden Stops and COVID-19: Lessons from Mexico’s History
The COVID-19 pandemic produced a sharp contraction in capital flows in emerging markets during the spring of 2020. Such contractions are known as “sudden stops” and historically have been associated with significant downturns in a country’s economic activity. Evidence from Mexico’s financial crisis history suggests that sudden stops tend to exhibit a common pattern: the crisis lasts one to two years before a rapid but partial recovery, followed by years of protracted stagnation.
Journal Article
The banking sector rescue in Mexico
In Mexico the December 1994 peso devaluation provoked a profound economic downturn in that country and revealed a fragile banking sector. Fearful that the financial system would collapse under a rising level of past due loans, the Mexican government mounted a rescue of the banking sector by intervening in the daily operations of some problem banks while establishing a series of capitalization and restructuring programs available to all banks. ; This article examines Mexico's bank rescue efforts (1995-98) with a particular focus on the role of the deposit insurance fund, the Bank Fund for the ...
Journal Article
The Mexican peso crisis: implications for international finance
The Mexican peso crisis has raised legitimate questions about Mexican economic policies before and during the events of December 1994 and January 1995, but its propagation through international financial markets has also pointed to broader questions about those markets. This article considers the international financial implications of the peso crisis from three perspectives: the creditors and their markets, the countries receiving large capital inflows, and the functioning of the international financial system.
Working Paper
Country fund discounts and the Mexican crisis of December 1994: did local residents turn pessimistic before international investors?
It has been suggested that Mexican investors were the "front-runners" in the peso crisis of December 1994, turning pessimistic before international investors. Different expectations about their own economy, perhaps due to asymmetric information, prompted Mexican investors to be the first ones to leave the country. This paper investigates whether data from three Mexican country funds provide evidence that supports the "divergent expectations" hypothesis. We find that, right before the devaluation, Mexican country fund Net Asset Values (driven mainly by Mexican investors) dropped faster ...
Journal Article
Mexico's financial crisis affected other Latin countries
Report
The balance of payments and borrowing constraints: an alternative view of the Mexican crisis
In this paper we develop a model in which a country faces a balance of payments crisis if constraints on its international borrowing bind. We use the model to describe the dynamics of the trade balance, capital account, and balance of payments of a country that borrows to finance consumption following sweeping macroeconomic and structural reforms and then hits constraints on its international borrowing. We compare the predictions of this theoretical example with events in Mexico from 1987 through 1995.
Working Paper
Financial crises and total factor productivity
Total factor productivity (TFP) falls markedly during financial crises, as we document with recent evidence from Mexico and Asia. These falls are unusual in magnitude and present a difficult challenge for the standard small open economy neoclassical model. We show in the case of Mexicos 1994-95 crisis that the model predicts that inputs and output should have fallen much more than they did. Using models with endogenous factor utilization, we find that capital utilization and labor hoarding can account for a large fraction of the TFP fall during the crisis. However, these models also predict ...