This paper presents evidence that the weakness of legal institutions for
corporate governance had an important e!ect on the extent of depreciations and
stock market declines in the Asian crisis. By `corporate governancea we mean
the e!ectiveness of mechanisms that minimize agency con#icts involving managers,
with particular emphasis on the legal mechanisms that prevent the
expropriation of minority shareholders (see Shleifer and Vishny, 1997a). The
theoretical explanation is simple and quite complementary to the usual macroeconomic
arguments. If expropriation by managers increases when the expected
rate of return on investment falls, then an adverse shock to investor con"dence
will lead to increased expropriation as well as lower capital in#ow and greater
attempted capital out#ow 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
"nd 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 "nancial troubles deepened.