4. Macroeconomic measures
4.1. Fiscal and monetary policy
Table 3 shows government fiscal balance as a percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 1996 for 25 countries (a minus sign indicates a budget deficit). It is striking that Indonesia had a balanced government budget and none of the Asian countries that experienced a large depreciation had a serious fiscal deficit. Not surprisingly, the first two columns of Table 4 show that the government budget deficit is not significant in the exchange rate regression, either by itself or with the inclusion of the East Asia dummy. The R-squared is 0.09 before we include the East Asia dummy and rises to only 0.10 with that dummy. In the standard theory of balance of payments crises (Krugman, 1979), the budget deficit should affect the exchange rate through affecting the money supply. Even if budget deficits have no discernible direct effect, there could be an impact via money growth. Table 3 shows the growth rate of broad money in 1996 for 25 countries. It is just significant in the exchange rate regressions at the 10% level with or without the East Asia dummy (columns 3 and 4 of Table 4) when we drop Turkey, which is an extreme outlier with 120% money growth. With Turkey in the sample, broad money growth is significant and negative at the 5% level.