Contagion Transmission and Systemic Risk
The Asian economic crisis, which originated in Thailand with the sudden devaluation of the Thai baht, rapidly spilled over into the neighbouring economies through three channels: geographical proximity and communication; trade and competitive devaluation; and signalling. The geographical proximity channel, as measured by the physical distance and telecommunication interactions between Thailand and other Asia-5 economies, does not appear to have been very significant, however. The trade and competitive devaluation channel also does not, appear to have been important, despite the large similarity of export goods of over 40% (see Table 5, Col. 4). The most important channel for the transmission of crisis contagion from Thailand to the other Asia-5 countries seems to have occurred through the signalling channel. The collapse of the Thai baht warned foreign investors that the fragility of the Thai financial system was replicated in the other Asian economies. This caused the run by foreign creditors to withdraw capital from South Korea, Malaysia and then Indonesia. The rapid regional spillover of the crisis contagion from Thailand induced the IMF to intervene and bail out the crisis victims and stem the spread of the crisis beyond the region to the global economy. The economic justification for intervention in the financial markets was that the offer of a bailout, deposit insurance, or the imposing of reserve requirements was aimed at preventing the crisis contagion from snowballing into systemic risk causing the collapse of the whole financial system. There are at least two grounds for intervention or bailouts to prevent crisis contagion from becoming a full-blown systemic risk. First, the divergence between social and private risk, because private agents fail to internalise the costs of contagion risks. Secondly, market failure to price risks efficiently because of the focus on short-term gains, regardless of the soundness of long-term fundamentals,
just as Keynes' metaphor on beauty contests explained,that a selection in a beauty contest is made on the basis of what other judges consider to be beauty rather than who fundamentally is the true beauty in the contest. Thus, decision-making based on herd behaviour unrelated to the true macroeconomic fundamentals, even when these are sound, can precipitate a financial crisis