The "Asian Crisis" of 1997-98 affected all the "emerging markets" open to capital flows. Measures of corporate governance, particularly the effectiveness of protection for minority shareholders, explain the extent ofexchange rate depreciation and stock market decline better than do standard macroeconomic measures. A possible explanation is that in countries with weak corporate governance, worse economic prospects result in more by and thus a larger fall in asset prices c 2000 S.A. All rights reserved
What caused the large exchange rate depreciations and stock market declines in some Asian countries during 1997-98? The three main explanations for the "Asian crisis" emphasize macroeconomic and banking issues. The standard crisis to inappropriate macroeconomic Washington view attributes the Asian policy during the 1990s, made worse by inept management of the initial depreciation in 1997 (Greenspan, 1998; Corsetti et al., 1998). In contrast, Radelet and Sachs (1998a, b) and Wade and Veneroso (1998) argue that the crisis began with mild panic that had no real foundation and was made serious only by IMF pressure to increase interest rates and to close down banks. Krugman (1998 presents a third theory based on international bank behavior, arguing there was a "Pangloss equilibrium'' that caused a bubble in asset prices. In his view, the Asian panics had their origins in implicit (and implausible) guarantees offered by governments and believed by investors
These explanation agree that for some reason, perhaps foreign investors in fundamentals, there was a loss of confidence by domestic and increase in capital all emerging markets. This led to a fall in capital inflows and an depreciation and outflows that triggered, in some cases, a very large nominal a stock market crash. At the same time, these explanations do not address exactly why this loss of confidence had such large effects on the exchange rate and stock countries but not in others
his paper presents evidence weakness of legal institutions for corporate governance had an important effect on the extent of depreciations and stock market declines "corporate governance we mean the of mechanisms that minimize agency conflicts involving man prevent the agers, with particular emphasis on the legal mechanisms expropriation of minority shareholders (see Shleifer and Vishny theoretical explanation is simple and quite complementary to the usual macro economic 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 The Bangkok Bank of Commerce is a well-documented example of expropriation by managers that worsened as the bank's financial troubles
The experience of creditors in Hong Kong who lent to firms doing business in China is similar Hong company liquidators able to recover assets of Chinese companies that default on loans (Wall Street 25. 1999, p. A14. More generally, very few debt defaults from Journal, August the Asian crisis of 1997-98 have resulted in investors receiving any liquidation value. Economist (January 30, 1999, p. 59) reports that "despite the creation last year of a bankruptcy law in Indonesia where there had been none before, it is still virtually impossible to force a defaulted debtor into liquidation (the few creditors that have tried are still tangled up in legal appeals)." During the crisis Korean minority shareholders protested the transfer of resources out of large firms, including Samsung Electronics and sK Telecom. Most collapses of banks and firms in Russia after the devaluation of August 1998 were associated with complete expropriation; creditors and minority shareholders got nothing (Troika Dialog, 1999). Table 1 summarizes the details of leading allegations of crisis. Note that in many- o expropriation in countries affected by the Asian these cases, controlling shareholders did not need to break any local order to expropriate from
In most of these instances,management was able to transfer cash and other assets out of a company with outside investors, perhaps to pay the manage- ment's personal debts, to shore up another company with different shareholders or to go straight into a foreign bank account. The fact that management in most emerging markets is also the controlling shareholder makes these transfers easier to achieve. The downturns in these countries have been associated with significantly more expropriation of cash and tangible assets by manager Our results highlight the importance of the legal prote