Interpreting the crisis
The economic shocks affecting East Asia were not followed by a normal cyclical downturn, but what some describe as “runs” on financial systems and currencies. Some argue that these runs reflected a classic financial panic that did not reflect poor economic policies or institutional arrangements. As is well known, even well-managed banks or financial intermediaries are vulnerable to panics, because they traditionally engage in maturity transformation. That is, banks accept deposits with short maturities (say, three months) to finance loans with longer maturities (say, a year or longer). Maturity transformation is beneficial because it can make more funds available to productive long-term investors than they would otherwise receive. Under normal conditions, banks have no problem managing their portfolios to meet expected withdrawals. However, if all depositors decided to withdraw their funds from a given bank at the same time, as in the case of a panic, the bank would not have enough liquid assets to meet its obligations, threatening the viability of an otherwise solvent financial institution.
As pointed out by Radelet and Sachs (1998), East Asian financial institutions had incurred a significant amount of external liquid liabilities that were not entirely backed by liquid assets, making them vulnerable to panics. As a result of this maturity transformation, some otherwise solvent financial institutions may indeed have been rendered insolvent because they were unable to deal with the sudden interruption in the international flow of funds.
However, it is apparent that this is not the entire story, as the impact of the crisis varied significantly across economies. In particular, as investors tested currency pegs and financial systems in the region, those economies with the most vulnerable financial sectors (Indonesia, South Korea, and Thailand) have experienced the most severe crises. In contrast, economies with more robust and well-capitalized financial institutions (such as Singapore) have not experienced similar disruptions, in spite of slowing economic activity and declining asset values. Indeed the collapse of the Thai baht in July 1997 and of the Korean won in the last quarter of 1997 were preceded by signs of significant weaknesses in the domestic financial sector, notably an inability by domestic borrowers to service their debts. In Indonesia, it became apparent after the crisis that domestic lenders could not monitor adequately the financial condition of their borrowers, a situation that worsened the severity of the crisis. This suggests that understanding what factors contributed to weaknesses in the financial sectors of the most affected economies may help make them less vulnerable to financial crises in the future.