The crisis clearly began in summer 1997 with the initial devaluation of Thailand. However, there is no agreement on when the crisis ended. There were basically four phases: fall 1997, when the major problems were in Asia and a few countries in Latin America; spring 1998, when the crisis is perceived to have spread to Russia and Brazil; summer 1998, when Russia devalued; and fall 1998, when Brazil struggled against devaluation. The crisis from Brazil's point of view continued at least through the eventual devaluation in January 1999, although by this time most of the Asian countries were starting to recover (and their exchange rates were actually appreciating). All our regressions use mid-January 1999 as the ending point. None of our results are affected by including or excluding Brazil's January 1999 devaluation, and we also perform similar regression results using March 1998, July 1998, September 1998, November 1998, and April 1999 as alternative ending points. Table 2 presents the raw exchange rate data for these alternative dates. We report these robustness checks in more detail as we move through the analysis.
For stock markets, we use the International Finance Corporation's Investable Index (published in the IFC's 1998 and 1999 Emerging Markets Factbook and updated daily in the Financial Times) which measures stock market returns for a selected set of companies in U.S. dollars. This index includes the largest and most liquid stocks in each market. Using the IFC's Investable Index reduces the usual problem whereby posted prices in illiquid markets are not real transaction prices. Table 3 reports the value of this IFC index at the end of 1998 and at its lowest point in 1998, assuming that the value for each country was equal to 100 at the end of 1996. The IFC does not report an index for Hong Kong or Singapore, so we use the standard Hang Seng Stock Index and Straits Times Stock Index respectively, converted into U.S. dollars.