This paper presents evidence that the weakness of legal institutions for corporate governance had an important effect on the extent of depreciation and stock market declines in the Asian crisis. By `corporate governancea we mean
the effectiveness of mechanisms that minimize agency conflicts involving managers, with particular emphasis on the legal mechanisms that prevent the expropriation of minority shareholders (see Shleifer and Vishny, 1997a). The theoretical explanation is simple and quite complementary to the usual macroeconomic arguments. If expropriation by managers increases when the expected rate of return on investment falls, then an adverse shock to investor confidence will lead to increased expropriation as well as lower capital inflow and greater attempted capital outflow for a country. These, in turn, will translate into lower stock prices and a depreciated exchange rate. In the case of the Asian crisis, we find that corporate governance provides at least as convincing an explanation
for the extent of exchange rate depreciation and stock market decline as any or
all of the usual macroeconomic arguments.