Early in the crisis, almost all analysts (led by the IMF) pointed towards weaknesses in the
Asian economies and corruption-cum moral hazard, and a few (notably the editorial page of the
Wall Street Journal) laid the blame mainly on the initial devaluations. Panic and weaknesses in
international capital markets were not the explanations of choice, though we favored such a view
in our first assessment of the crisis (Radelet and Sachs, 1998a).