According to this viewpoint, creditors recognized all the
growing problems in Asia, and believed hat at some point these economies would collapse, just as had happened in Mexico. The only question was when, and so creditors were simply using shortterm
lines of credit as a means of betting on the timing of the end of the Asian bubble.
Although this argument has some appeal, it does not stand up under close scrutiny.
Almost no one believed that Asia was headed for any kind of collapse, even as late as early 1997.
With the exception of some growing concerns about Thailand starting in mid-1996, investment
bank reports were all glowing in their praise, ratings agencies continued to give positive outlooks,
and the IMF and World Bank regularly lauded these countries with only a few modest suggestions
for reform. There simply were very few voices that argued that Asia was heading for any kind of
collapse. Scarcely a negative voice was heard until it was too late.6 The overriding sentiment
across Asia after the Mexican crisis was not Athe IMF will bail us out too,@ but rather Ait can=t
happen here.@
Moral hazard, on the other hand, almost surely played a role in Russia. Investors clearly
had grave doubts about Russia=s medium-term stability. Risk premia on Russian securities were
very high. Investors talked openly about the risk of collapse, and about the safety net provided to
Russia by the IMF and (implicitly) the G-7. Russia was simply viewed as Atoo big to fail.@ The
indicators of moral hazard in the case of Russia simply underscore the lack of such phenomena in
the case of Asia.
A second moral hazard argument is that creditors felt secure that they would be repaid for
lending to specific projects that were controlled by companies with close connections to the
government. Akerlof and Romer (1996) show that a moral hazard crisis can develop when banks
are able to borrow funds on the basis of explicit or implicit public guarantees. When banks are
under-regulated, they may use the funds in very risky or even criminal ventures. Krugman (1998)
argued that the Asian crisis is a reflection of excess gambling and stealing by banks that gained
access to domestic and foreign deposits by virtue of state guarantees (although, as noted, he
subsequently changed his mind, and even criticized such views in later writing (Krugman, 1999)).
There is little question that many banks and firms expected government support to ensure
their profitability and their ability to repay their creditors. None of the chaebol in Korea had been
allowed to fail for at least a decade before Hanbo steel collapsed in early 1997. State-owned
banks, especially, believed they would always be bailed out. Firms owned by members of the
Suharto family in Indonesia and their close allies had every reason to expect special favors to
ensure continued profitability. Furthermore, there is little question that creditors knew this, and
were unlikely to impose stringent loan conditions on well-connected firms. However, it is
probably more accurate to say that these creditors expected these firms to continue to be
profitable and thus repay their loans, rather than that they expected a crash and a subsequent
bailout. Indeed, creditors often complained in Asia that weak bankruptcy laws made it nearly impossible for them to collect on collateral in the event of non-performing loans.
Much has been made of corruption in Asia, with countless commentators arguing that
cronyism and Asian business practices were ultimately at the heart of the crisis. There is little
question that there was extensive corruption in Asia, and that these practices undermined the
allocation of capital and weakened financial systems. Suharto=s growing family empire, for
example, contributed to the crisis both because of the government ultimately guaranteed many
risky investments and because Suharto was unwilling to make the family firms make adjustments
in the early stages of the crisis. But two facts make it hard to argue that the crisis was primarily
the result of corruption. First, corruption on at least a similar scale had existed in Asia for
decades, and yet these economies had grown very rapidly without any sign of a crisis. If anything,
corruption in Korea was probably worse in the mid-1980s than in the mid-1990s, and yet it did
not face a similar crisis at that time.
Second, corruption is a generalized problem in almost all emerging markets. As shown by
Furman and Stiglitz (1998) and Radelet and Sachs (1998b), the Asian crisis economies as a group
do not stand out on business surveys and other measures as being more corrupt than non-crisis
emerging markets. Yes, Indonesia scores at the bottom of almost all rankings, but Thailand scores
comparable to, and Korea higher than, many non-crisis merging markets such as Chile, Colombia,
India, China and Taiwan. Corruption simply is not the obvious characteristic that separates the
crisis countries from the non-crisis emerging markets. That is not to suggest that corruption
either helped these countries or was benign -- far from it. Rather, while cronyism certainly
created some of the vulnerabilities that set the stage for the crisis, it alone cannot account for the
timing, severity, or even location of the crisis.
Creditor Panic?
The third interpretation is based on the idea that the crisis is mainly the result of a selffulfilling
panic of investors. This interpretation is described in detail in Radelet and Sachs (1998a
and 1998b). This story goes as follows. Yes, there are vulnerabilities: falling foreign exchange
reserves, slowing export growth, fragile financial systems, and overvaluation of the real exchange
rate. But these vulnerabilities are not enough to explain the abruptness and depth of the crisis.
As some have put it, Athe punishment is much worse than the crime.@ The solution to this
conundrum is that rational investors may have an incentive to pull money out of an otherwise
healthy country if the other investors are doing the same thing. In more formal terms, the crisis is
a Abad@ equilibrium in a situation of multiple equilibria. The bad equilibrium occurs when each
investor comes to expect that the other investors will suddenly pull out their funds. It then
becomes rational for each investor, in fact, to behave just as expected, that is, to suddenly
withdraw the loans that are outstanding. When this happens, a severe economic crisis unfolds.
The key analytical question is when such a self-fulfilling panic can occur. In our view, the
main condition is a high level of short-term foreign liabilities relative to short-term foreign assets.
It is exactly in that situation that each creditor knows that it must flee a country ahead of other creditors in the event of a withdrawal of foreign capital. Since the available short-term assets
can=t cover all of the short-term liabilities, each creditor knows that the last short-term creditors
to withdraw their funds will actually not be repaid on time (since the economy simply lacks the
liquid assets to pay off all creditors on short notice).
The evidence in favor of the panic interpretation in Asia is both indirect and direct. The
indirect evidence has two main parts. First, the crisis was unanticipated, suggesting that it can not
be easily explained by fundamentals. Almost no one who was closely watching Asia in the months
before the crisis, even those who were deeply familiar with Asia=s flaws, predicted an economic
meltdown. Second, even ex post, it is hard to find fundamental explanations commensurate with
the depth of the crisis. The problems that Asia=s critics now point to should have led to a growth
slowdown, or even a recession, not a deep contraction and implosion of both the banking and
corporate sectors.
The direct evidence has three main parts. First, the crisis hit only countries that were in a
vulnerable position, i.e. with high levels of short-term foreign debt relative to short-term foreign
assets. No emerging market with low levels of short-term debt relative to reserves was hit, even
those with high levels of corruption and weak banking systems. Second, the crisis hit several
countries with widely varying economic structures and fundamentals within a relatively short
period of time. Korea and Indonesia had relatively little in common at the time of the crisis,
except the levels of short-term debt and a common geographical region. Third, the crisis eased up
after about one year, even though several fundamental conditions (e.g., corporate and bank
financial health) were not significantly improved. The most striking example is Indonesia, where
the rupiah appreciated substantially between mid-July and the end of October, starting only weeks
after the chaos surrounding the resignation of Suharto. This can hardly be interpreted as a return
of investor confidence, since most investors are even more uncertain about Indonesia=s future in
the wake of Suharto=s downfall, and the ensuing political and social instability. The easing of the
crisis reflects, in our interpretation, the end of the short-term outflows of capital. As debts were
repaid, rescheduled, or defaulted upon, there was little foreign capital left to flee. As the net
capital outflows subsided, the intense pressure on the exchange rate ended, and the overshooting
caused by financial panic was reversed.