Contagion
The currency crises of the 1990s have consisted of three regional "waves": the ERM crises in Europe from 1992-3, the Latin American crises of 1994-5, and the Asian crises currently in progress. But why should there be such regional waves - as Ronald Reagan said after visiting Latin America, they are all different countries, so why should they experience a common crisis? This is the issue of "contagion".
One simple explanation of contagion involves real linkages between the countries: a currency crisis in country A worsens the fundamentals of country B. For example, the southeast Asian countries currently under speculative attack are, to at least some extent, selling similar products in world export markets; thus a Thai devaluation tends to depress Malaysian exports, and could push Malaysia past the critical point that triggers a crisis. In the European crises of 1992-3, there was an element of competitive devaluation: depreciation of the pound adversely affected the trade and employment of France, or at least was perceived to do so, and thus increased the pressures on the French government to abandon its own commitment to a fixed exchange rate.
However, even in the European and Asian cases the trade links appear fairly weak; and in the Latin American crisis of 1995 they were virtually nil. Mexico is neither an important market nor an important competitor for Argentina; why, then, should one peso crisis have triggered another?
At this point two interesting "rational" explanations for crisis contagion between seemingly unlinked economies have been advanced (Drazen 1997). One is that countries are perceived as a group with some common, but imperfectly observed characteristics. To caricature this position, Latin American countries share a common culture and therefore, perhaps, a "Latin temperament"; but the implications of that temperament for economic policy may be unclear. Once investors have seen one country with that cultural background abandon its peg under pressure, they may revise downward their estimate of the willingness of other such countries to defend their parities. (A personal observation: in 1982 Latin countries suffered a crisis which, although it mainly involved dollar-denominated debt rather than domestic currency, was similar in form and psychology to currency crises. This crisis quickly spread from Mexico through the whole area. The Philippines, however, were at first unaffected, even though both the policies and the debt burden were quite as bad as those of Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil; it was not until almost a year after the original onset that investors seem to have decided that this former Spanish colony was in fact a Latin rather than an Asian country, and attacked).
Alternatively, one may argue that the political commitment to a fixed exchange rate is itself subject to herding effects. This is perhaps clearest in the European crises: once Britain and Italy have left the exchange rate mechanism, it is less politically costly for Sweden to abandon its peg to the Deutsche mark than it would have been had Sweden devalued on its own.
One may also argue, of course, that contagion reflects irrational behavior on the part of investors, either because individuals are really irrational or because money managers face asymmetric incentives. South Korea has few strong trade links with the troubled economies of Southeast Asia; yet a fund manager who did not reduce exposure in South Korea, then was caught in a devaluation of the won, might well be blamed for lack of due diligence - after all, Asian currencies have been risky in recent months, haven't they?
As in the case of herding in general, there seems to be positive as well as negative contagion. During the wave of optimism that followed Mexican and Argentine reforms in the early 1990s, countries that had done little actual reform, such as Brazil, were also lifted by the rising tide; and the apparent myopia of markets about Asian risks seems to have been fed by a general sense of optimism about Asian economies in general.
ContagionThe currency crises of the 1990s have consisted of three regional "waves": the ERM crises in Europe from 1992-3, the Latin American crises of 1994-5, and the Asian crises currently in progress. But why should there be such regional waves - as Ronald Reagan said after visiting Latin America, they are all different countries, so why should they experience a common crisis? This is the issue of "contagion".One simple explanation of contagion involves real linkages between the countries: a currency crisis in country A worsens the fundamentals of country B. For example, the southeast Asian countries currently under speculative attack are, to at least some extent, selling similar products in world export markets; thus a Thai devaluation tends to depress Malaysian exports, and could push Malaysia past the critical point that triggers a crisis. In the European crises of 1992-3, there was an element of competitive devaluation: depreciation of the pound adversely affected the trade and employment of France, or at least was perceived to do so, and thus increased the pressures on the French government to abandon its own commitment to a fixed exchange rate.However, even in the European and Asian cases the trade links appear fairly weak; and in the Latin American crisis of 1995 they were virtually nil. Mexico is neither an important market nor an important competitor for Argentina; why, then, should one peso crisis have triggered another?At this point two interesting "rational" explanations for crisis contagion between seemingly unlinked economies have been advanced (Drazen 1997). One is that countries are perceived as a group with some common, but imperfectly observed characteristics. To caricature this position, Latin American countries share a common culture and therefore, perhaps, a "Latin temperament"; but the implications of that temperament for economic policy may be unclear. Once investors have seen one country with that cultural background abandon its peg under pressure, they may revise downward their estimate of the willingness of other such countries to defend their parities. (A personal observation: in 1982 Latin countries suffered a crisis which, although it mainly involved dollar-denominated debt rather than domestic currency, was similar in form and psychology to currency crises. This crisis quickly spread from Mexico through the whole area. The Philippines, however, were at first unaffected, even though both the policies and the debt burden were quite as bad as those of Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil; it was not until almost a year after the original onset that investors seem to have decided that this former Spanish colony was in fact a Latin rather than an Asian country, and attacked).Alternatively, one may argue that the political commitment to a fixed exchange rate is itself subject to herding effects. This is perhaps clearest in the European crises: once Britain and Italy have left the exchange rate mechanism, it is less politically costly for Sweden to abandon its peg to the Deutsche mark than it would have been had Sweden devalued on its own.One may also argue, of course, that contagion reflects irrational behavior on the part of investors, either because individuals are really irrational or because money managers face asymmetric incentives. South Korea has few strong trade links with the troubled economies of Southeast Asia; yet a fund manager who did not reduce exposure in South Korea, then was caught in a devaluation of the won, might well be blamed for lack of due diligence - after all, Asian currencies have been risky in recent months, haven't they?As in the case of herding in general, there seems to be positive as well as negative contagion. During the wave of optimism that followed Mexican and Argentine reforms in the early 1990s, countries that had done little actual reform, such as Brazil, were also lifted by the rising tide; and the apparent myopia of markets about Asian risks seems to have been fed by a general sense of optimism about Asian economies in general.
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