7. Conclusion
A simple model shows that managerial agency problems can make countries with weak legal systems vulnerable to the effects of a sudden loss of investor confidence. Countries with only weakly enforceable minority shareholder rights are particularly vulnerable. If such a country experiences even a small loss of confidence, outside investors reassess the likely amount of expropriation by managers and adjust the amount of capital they are willing to provide. The result can be a fall in asset values and a collapse of the exchange rate.
In cross-country regressions, corporate governance variables explain more of the variation in exchange rates and stock market performance during the Asian crisis than do macroeconomic variables. This result is not sensitive to changing the sample period, altering the precise definition of variables, or dropping outliers.
This does not mean that macroeconomic explanations are not important in the Asian crisis. While there is no agreement among economists about the relative importance of the current account, reserves, foreign debt, monetary policy, and fiscal policy for emerging markets in 1997–98, there is widespread agreement that macroeconomic policies are important in particular instances. However, as our results show, these variables do not have simple or direct effects in determining the extent of the crisis across emerging market countries in 1997–98.
Our evidence suggests that corporate governance in general, and the de facto protection of minority shareholder rights in particular, matters a great deal for the extent of exchange rate depreciation and stock market decline in 1997–98. Although our results do not indicate which countries are vulnerable to a loss of confidence, they do suggest that the extent of exchange rate and stock market collapse in response to a loss of confidence is affected by investor protection. Corporate governance can be of first-order importance in determining the extent of macroeconomic problems in crisis situations.