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在金融危机之前的经济形势:两个主要的观点。我们可以发现不同类型的金融危机:这五个类型的危机理论差异在以下几个层次:诊断、底层机制、预测、预防和补救[1]。 宏观经济政策性危机:规范化的克鲁格曼(1979)模型,“国际收支危机(货币贬值,外汇储备的损失,固定汇率的崩溃)出现时,由中央银行国内信贷扩张与固定汇率不一致引起的危机[2]”。通常,预算赤字是货币化的信贷扩张的结果。外汇储备逐渐下降,直到中央银行容易突然运行（此处应该指的是量化宽松，即印钞票）,耗尽剩余的储备,从而推动经济浮动利率。 金融恐慌:Dybvig-Diamond后(1983)的银行挤兑模型，金融恐慌是金融市场多重平衡引起的。恐慌是一个不利的均衡结果,短期债权人突然从贷款人手里抽取资金。概括地说,恐慌可能发生于以下三个条件:短期债务超过短期资产;没有一个债权人足够大的自由市场,提供所有必要的信用偿还现有的短期债务,而且没有最后贷款人。 Points Of View Of Economic Situation Before Crisis Economics Essay Economic situation before crisis: the two main points of view. We can find different types of financial crisis: the theoretical differences among these five types of crises are significant at several levels: diagnosis, underlying mechanisms, prediction, prevention, and remediation [1] Macroeconomic policy-induced crisis: for the canonical Krugman (1979) model, “a balance of payments crisis (currency depreciation; loss of foreign exchange reserves; collapse of a pegged exchange rate) arises when domestic credit expansion by the central bank is inconsistent with the pegged exchange rate [2] ”. Often, the credit expansion results from the monetization of budget deficits. Foreign exchange reserves fall gradually until the Central Bank is vulnerable to a sudden run, which exhausts the remaining reserves, and pushes the economy to a floating rate. Financial panic: Following the Dybvig-Diamond (1983) model of a bank run, a financial panic is a case of multiple equilibria in the financial markets. A panic is an adverse equilibrium outcome in which short-term creditors suddenly withdraw their loans from a solvent borrower. In general terms, a panic can occur when three conditions hold: short-term debts exceed short-term assets; no single private-market creditor is large enough to supply all of the credits necessary to pay off existing short-term debts; and there is no lender of last resort. In this case, it becomes rational for each creditor to withdraw its credits if the other creditors are also fleeing from the borrower, even though each creditor would also be prepared to lend if the other creditors were to do the same. The panic may result in large economic losses (e.g. premature suspension of investment projects, liquidation of the borrower, creditor grab race, etc.). Bubble collapse: Following Blanchard and Watson (1982) and others, a stochastic financial bubble occurs when speculators purchase a financial asset at a price above its fundamental value in the expectation of a subsequent capital gain. In each period, the bubble (measured as the deviation of the asset price from its fundamental price) may continue to grow, or may collapse with a positive probability. The collapse, when it occurs, is unexpected but not completely unforeseen, since market participants are aware of the bubble and the probability distribution regarding its collapse. A considerable amount of modeling has examined the conditions in which a speculative bubble can be a rational equilibrium. Moral-hazard crisis: Following Akerlof and Romer (1996), a moral-hazard crisis arises because banks are able to borrow funds on the basis of implicit or explicit public guarantees of bank liabilities. If banks are undercapitalized or under-regulated, they may use these funds in overly risky or even criminal ventures. Akerlof and Romer argue that the “economics of looting,” in which banks use their state backing to purloin deposits is more common than generally perceived, and played a large role in the U.S. Savings and Loan crisis. Krugman (1998) similarly argues that the Asian crisis is a reflection of excessive gambling and indeed stealing by banks that gained access to domestic and foreign deposits by virtue of state guarantees on these deposits. 5) Disorderly workout: Following Sachs (1995), a disorderly workout occurs when an illiquid or insolvent borrower provokes a creditor grab race and a forced liquidation even though the borrower is worth more as an ongoing enterprise. A disorderly workout occurs especially when markets operate without the benefit of creditor coordination via bankruptcy law. The problem is sometimes known as a “debt overhang.” In essence, coordination problems among creditors prevent the efficient provision of worker capital to the financially distressed borrower, and delay or prevent the eventual discharge of bad debts (e.g. via debt-equity conversions or debt reduction). There have been many Currency Crises during the post-war era, which have played a central role in world affairs. Many questions about their causes and effects had not been answered during the years. At first we have to understand what a “Currency Crisis” is; but there is not a universally accepted definition. Krugman (2000) says that “(..) most would agree that they all involve one key element: investors fleeing a currency en masse out of fear that it might be devalued, in turn fueling the very devaluation they anticipated [3] ”. Most simply, Burnside, Eichenbaum, and Rebelo(2007) say that “a currency crisis is an episode in which the exchange rate depreciates substantially during a short period of time” [4] . There is also extensive literature on the causes and consequences of a currency crisis in a country with a fixed or heavily managed exchange rate. In this literature we can find three category models which explain the Currency Crisis divided in first-, second- and third-generation [5] . In the first-generation model we can catalogue Salant's work “on speculative attacks in the gold market [6] ”and later Krugman works (1979), refined by Flood and Garber’s (1984) works. This and other early models were created to explain Currency Crisis during the 70's and 80's; in fact, in this period numerous countries, especially Latin American countries, were plagued by frequent currency crisis. The model assumes that there is something wrong with economic fundamentals: a policy inconsistent with a fixed exchange rate is adopted (for example, excessive monetary growth). If that policy persists, the exchange rate will ultimately have to collapse. The question is "exactly when will it collapse?" At the end of the 70's many European Countries decided to implement the European Monetary System, an agreement of “fixed but adjustable exchange rates” due to limit the changing rates in Europe, and in 1987 the SME became a real fixed exchange rate regime. But in 1992, SME was invested in a series of speculative attacks. For this reason, the second-generation model was created, enriching the scheme, to explain the 1992-1993 SME crisis. Technically, the model is based on some kind of nonlinearity in the policy reaction function. If the policy is linear (roughly speaking, the policy is the same before and after the attack), there is usually only one solution to the model. But if it is not linear (the policy changes before and after the attack), there is a possibility of multiple equilibria— an equilibrium with attack and an equilibrium without an attack are both possible. But neither of these models could describe successfully the '97-'98 Asian Financial Crisis, Mexico 1994, Russia (1998), Brazil (1999); it was to explain this crisis that the literature has moved towards creating the third-generation model. The two main views that emerged are those of Radlet and Sachs (1998), Marshall (1998) and Chang and Velasco (1999) on one hand, which attribute the propagation of the Asian turmoil over time mainly to sudden shifts in market expectations and confidence followed by regional contagion; on the other hand, Corsetti, Pesenti, and Roubini (1998) and Dooley (1999) contributions said that “fundamental imbalances triggered the currency and financial crisis in 1997 even as after the crisis started, market overreaction and herding caused the plunge in exchange rates, assets prices, and economic activity to be more severe than warranted by the initial weak economic and financial conditions [7] ”. I.I Third-generation Models In order to understand the Asian Financial and Currency Crisis, one of the worst in history, we have to analyze the third-generation model [8] . In the third-generation model, different economists explore various mechanisms through which balance-sheet exposures may lead to a currency and a banking crisis; much of this literature focuses on relationships between endogenous variables, such as domestic interest rates, exchange rates, and current account imbalances, rather than on exogenous shocks that set off or exacerbate the crisis. There are two main hypotheses that have emerged. On one hand there are those who think that a sudden shift in market expectations and confidence were the key sources of the initial financial turmoil, its propagation and its regional contagion [9] . On the other hand, there are those who think that the Asian Crisis reflected both structural and policy distortions in the countries of the region.#p#分页标题#e# But in order to explain different models this it is important to expose the Krugman (1998a) interpretation, defining the “moral hazard” concept end describing the effect on the level of investment. The first moral-hazard problem is ”financial intermediaries whose liabilities are guaranteed by the government [10] ”. Milgrom and Roberts (1992) also suggest a simple numerical example to describe “The logic of moral hazard for guaranteed intermediaries” [11] , shown in Table1. We assume that the owner of a financial intermediary has raised $100 million from guaranteed creditors; there can be two alternative investments available: a safe investment, with a fixed return of 7%, and a volatile investment, that will yield $120 million if conditions are favorable, and only $80 million if they are not. Table 1 Moral-hazard and investment decisions A rational investor, risk-neutral, will choose the safest asset in this case. But, if we assume that the owner of the financial intermediary knows that while he can capture the excess returns in the good state, he can walk away from the losses in the bad state, he will choose the risky investment with which he gains 20 in the good state, but loses nothing in the bad state for an expected gain of 10. “Thus his incentive is to choose the risky investment, even though it has a lower expected return. And this distortion of investment decisions produces a deadweight social loss: the expected net return on the invested capital falls from $7 million to zero [12] ”. Continuing with Krugman's scheme, we start with a two-period economy: in the first period firms purchase capital; in the second they produce by using capital. Assuming that this is a small open economy, able to borrow at a fixed world interest rate (and the real interest rate is zero), with the production function of the following 2 Q = (A+u)K – BK where u is a random variable, introducing some uncertainty into the investment decision. We know that in this economy capital will earn its marginal product; that is, the rental per unit of capital will be R = A+u – 2BK In the absence of any distortion, capital will be invested up to the point in which the expected return equals the cost of funds, which we have defined to BE equal 1; so in an undistorted economy we will have K = (A+Eu)/2B At this point, we introduce the presence of guaranteed financial intermediaries; their owners need not put up any capital, and they can simply walk away if their institutions fail. Now we can assume that there are many actual or potential intermediaries, so that they will compete for any economic profits, and that intermediaries can directly own capital. The rational operators select their behavior, according to the values expected. In the proposed scheme, any rate of return on capital in excess of the world safe rate of interest , R > 1, represents a pure profit (thus there will be pure profits as long as there is any state of the world (any realization of u), in which R > 1). Competition among intermediaries will tend to put the profit to zero when: I. All capital ends up being purchased by guaranteed intermediaries. This is an extreme result, but it does capture the tendency of Asian businesses to become extremely leveraged by Western standards; II. Investment is pushed up to the point where R = 1 in the most favorable possible circumstance - that is, given the maximum possible value of u. Again, this is an extreme result, but it does capture the obvious tendency of Asian firms toward over-optimistic investment. The Krugman model suggests an expansion of demand investment; he supposes that A= 2, B= 0.5 , and u has as equal probability of equaling 0 or 1 [13] . In an undistorted economy, the level of investment would be K=2.5; if there are moral-hazard-prone financial intermediaries, the capital stock would be 3. In this model, the liberalization of capital movements amplifies the distortion, making unlimited amounts of capital available at a given interest. In this way, the moral hazard translates in an excess in the level of investment. “Asian economies experienced a noticeable boom-bust cycle not only in investment but also or even especially in asset prices. Presumably this reflected the fact that assets were in imperfectly elastic supply. So let us now go to the other extreme and consider a model in which the supply of assets is completely inelastic, and in which intermediaries therefore have their impact not on quantities but on prices” [14] . Assuming that the only available asset is land, and a two-period model: in the first period investors bid for land, setting its price; in the second, investors receive rents, which are uncertain at the time of bidding. To make the point, we can make a numerical example: the rent on a unit of land could be either 25, with a probability of 2/3, or 100, with a probability of 1/3; the Risk-neutral investors would then be willing to spend (2/3)H25 + (1/3) H100 = 50 for the rights to that land. If there are financial intermediaries they would be able to borrow at the world interest rate once again (again normalized to zero) because they are perceived as being guaranteed. Also, we assume that owners need not put any of their own money at risk, but that competition among the intermediaries eliminates any expected economic profit. Intermediaries will be willing to bid on the land, BUT THEY WILL DECIDE ON THE BIDS and not by LOOKING AT the expected value of future rent but at the Pangloss value, in this case 100. So all land will end up TO BE owned by intermediaries, and the price of land will be double WITH RESPECT TO ITS VALUE in an undistorted economy [15] . Then, Considering a three-period economy, again with random land rents of 25 and 100 with probabilities 2/3 and 1/3 in both the second an the third period, and assuming that there is a interest rate equal to zero (in an undistorted economy we can solve it backwards for the price), the expected rent in period 3, and therefore the price of land purchased at the end of period 2, will be 50. “The expected return on land purchased in period 1 is therefore the expected rent in period 2 (50) plus the expected price at which it can be sold (also 50), for a first-period price of 100. This is also, of course, the total expected rent over the two periods. (In this example, the price of land declines over time, from 100 to 50, even in the undistorted case. This is merely an artifact of the finite horizon and should simply be regarded as a baseline) [16] ”. Supposing that intermediaries are in a position to borrow with guarantees, at the end of period 2 they will be willing to pay the Pangloss value of third-period rent, 100. In the first period they will be willing to pay the most they could hope to realize off a piece of land: the Pangloss rent in period 2, plus the Pangloss price of land at the end of that period. So the price of land with intermediation will be 200 in period 1 - again, twice the undistorted price. I.II.Corsetti, Pesenti and Roubini: the macroeconomic fundamentals and the current account imbalances before 1997-1998 caused the Asian financial crisis. Solvency, resource balance gaps, sustainability OFTEN ECONOMIC literature has emphasized how negative this circumstance could BE FOR market stability. Also Lawrence Summers (1995-1996), the US Deputy Treasury, wanted to emphasize that point during the anniversary of the Mexican financial crisis, writing iN The Economist “close attention should be paid to any current account deficit in excess of 5% of GDP, particularly if it is financed in a way that could lead to rapid reversals [17] ”. Several Asian countries that WENT THROUGH currency collapses in 1997 had current account deficits during the 90s. In tables 1 and 2, two measures of the current account (as a Share of GDP) are shown: one based on the NIA (National Income Account), and one is based on balance of payment data. Malaysia and Thailand in particular show the largest and most persistent current account imbalances, and both experienced deficits for over a decade. Table 1. Current Account, NIA Definition (% of GDP) Source: Corsetti Pesenti Roubini, from the International Financial Statistics of the International Monetary Fund. Table 2: Current Account, BOP Definition (% of GDP) Source: Corsetti Pesenti Roubini, from the International Financial Statistics of the International Monetary Fund. In Thailand, the current account was over 6% of GDP virtually in each year in the 1990s, and approached 9% of GDP in 1995 and 1996; In Malaysia the deficit was above 10% of GDP in 1993, but in 1996 is reduced to 3.7% of GDP. The Philippines show a deficit around or above 5% of GDP for four years. Indonesia shows large imbalances at the beginning of the 90s, over 4% of GDP, then decreased in 1992 and 1993, but in 1995-1996 grows again at 3-4% of GDP. In Korea the situation WAS different: the current account deficit was low in 1990; it WAS ONLY since 1993 that the imbalance STARTED TO grow very quickly, arriving at ALMOST 5% of the GDP in 1996 .#p#分页标题#e# These current account imbalances can be mainly explained by large trade deficits, “with a relatively small role played by net factor payments to the rest of the world [18] ”. Hong Kong, at the beginning of the decade had a large current account surplus; but in 1995 and 1996 went into a deficit of more than 2% of GDP. Only Taiwan and Singapore kept large current account surpluses during the 90s. In China, at the beginning of the 90s, the current account was in surplus, but in 1993 turned into a 2% deficit. Data on the current account position shows that “the countries that came under attack in 1997 appear to have been those with large current account deficits throughout the 90s [19] ”; in 1997 the appreciation of the US Dollar relative to the currencies of the high-deficit countries Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Korea, and Indonesia reached 52%, 52%, 78%, 107% and 1521% respectively. On the contrary, those countries with smaller deficits didn't live phenomena of this magnitude (for example China had a depreciation of only 2%). The correlation between currency depreciation and external imbalances does not necessary imply a causation; but for those who said that crisis is determined by structural problems, data suggests that current account problems played a key role in the Asian financial crisis. It is difficult to find a criterion that can determine when current account deficits reach excessive proportions, triggering speculative outflows, devaluation expectations and financial crisis; CONSEQUEntly, IT IS difficult to evaluate the sustainability of current account imbalances. We attempt to tackle this task by using a standard theoretical criterion for assessing current account imbalances that is the notion of solvency. We say that “a country is solvent to the extent that the discounted value of the expected stock of its foreign debt in the infinitely distant future is non-positive” [20] ; that is, a country which is accumulating foreign debt at a rate that is faster than the real cost of borrowing, cannot expect to be able to maintain such practice forever, but a country could experiment prolonged current account deficit, remaining solvent, and generate trade surpluses in the future [21] . An easy and popular solvency test is a “non-increasing foreign debt to GDP ratio [22] ”. Under the assumption that “in the long run the interest rate exceeds the growth rate of output, a stable to GDP ratio in a sufficient condition for solvency. (RISCRIVI) Then, by calculating the so-called “resource balance gap”, the criterion of solvency can be made to function; we can calculate this resource balance gap, by making an assumptions about the long-run differential between the real interest rate and the growth rate of the economy. www.ukassignment.org.Corsetti, Pesenti and Roubini (1998) say that Exists compelling reasons, to argue that such a differential is positive in a steady state, regardless of whether negative values are observed in the short run. The gap will be larger for those countries with a large trade deficit to GDP ratio, a large differential between the real interest rate and the growth of the economy, or a large debt to GDP [23] . Assuming that the differential between the real interest rate and output growth is 1%, we can see that resource balance gaps were already large in 1996: Table 3: Resource Balance Gap 1996 (% GDP) Source: Corsetti, Pesenti Roubini If we focus on the notion of sustainability of the external balances, we can have a more accurate assessment of the current account deficits. It is important to underline that if a country is running a current account deficit and accumulating foreign debt relative to its GDP, such solvency requires the country to run trade surpluses at some point in the future. The study of external imbalances, is based on the empirical analysis of macroeconomic performances during crisis episodes, due to find under what conditions sharp trade balance reversals are more likely to occur. (RISCRIVI) Therefore, is now important to have an overview of macroeconomic fundamentals in the Asian region: GDP growth, private and public saving rate, inflation and degree of openness. GDP growth If we take a look at the 80s experience on debt crisis, we can see that there are several practical reasons as to why large account deficits may be perceived as sustainable when current and expected economic growth is high. “For a given current account deficit to GDP ratio, higher growth rates imply a slower dynamic of the foreign debt to GDP ratio, and enhance the country's ability to service its external debt”. Furthermore, high GDP growth may reflect sustained capital accumulation rates driven by expectations of high profitability, and high growth might also explain a transitory decline in the saving rate in anticipation of higher future income. In that case, current account imbalances driven by a transitory fall in private savings should not have to worry, since future income growth will lead to an increase in future savings. In table 4, which presents data in a sample of Asian countries during the 90s, GDP growth rates are remarkably high. Table 4: GDP Growth Source: Corsetti, Pesenti, Roubini (1998 a) With the exception of the Philippines, which had a low growth rate, the average of the growth rates in the other countries, is more than 7% of GDP; sometimes near 10%. For this reason the large current account deficit should not pose a threat. But Corsetti, Pesenti and Roubini (1998a) want to emphasize that the situation is more complex than it seems to be. During history we have often seen that countries with high economic growth are most vulnerable to crisis: this happened in Chile and Mexico at the end of 70s, with growth rates which exceeded 7%. High growth rates may induce excessively optimistic beliefs that economic expansion will persist unabated in the future; it is possible that there will be a consumption and investment boom, or a large capital inflow. In these situations, an external shock can suddenly change expectations, can have devastating effects and can cause a rapid reversal of capital flows, triggering a currency crash [24] . Investment rates, efficiency and profitability Another way to assess current account sustainability is to analyze the inter-temporal decisions underlying a current account deficit. In particular, since the current account is equal to the difference between national savings and investment, a fall in savings or an increase in investments can create a deficit, and the general consensus indicates that that borrowing from abroad is less “dangerous” for sustainability if it finances new investment, rather than consumption. To realize this mechanism it is necessary that the return on investment is at least as high as the cost of the borrowed funds and that high investment rates contribute to the enhancement of productive capacity in the traded sector. Corsetti, Pesenti and Roubini (1998a) emphasize that these conditions didn't exist in the South Asian Countries. In Table 5 the investment rates in Asian countries are shown; they had very high rates of investment during the 90s, in many cases with rates above 30% of GDP, and some cases above 40% of GDP (with the exception of Taiwan and Philippines, which had 20-25% range). Table 5: Investment Rates (% of GDP) Source: Corsetti, Pesenti, Roubini (1998 a) This data is not credible: in fact, these countries were classified as “investment” and from which, several had simply to be classified as consumption. (RISCRIVI) We can obtain a standard size of investment efficiency by calculating the Incremental Capital Output Ratio (ICOR), which is the ratio between the investment rate and the rate of output growth. By observing its level and changes, over time we can estimate the productivity of capital. Table 6 shows two sets of data: the first for the 1987-1992 period and the second for the 1993-1996 period. As we can see, the investment efficiency is generally high in the Asian region. BUT, WITH THE ExceptION OF (giusto) the Philippines and Indonesia, the ICOR worsened from the first to the second period: this suggests that the efficiency of investments was already falling in the four years prior to the 1997 crisis. Table 6: Increment Capital Output Ratio (ICOR) Source: JP Morgan (1998) I.II.IV Private and public savings The private and public savings analysis is important in order to have more information on the sustainability of the underlying current account imbalances [25] . If lower public savings caused a fall in national saving, it is often more disruptive than if the fall is in private savings. “The fall in private savings could in fact be a transitory phenomenon, bound to the expectations of higher future GDP growth raising permanent income; the transitory fall in savings today will be offset by higher savings in the future, when the anticipated increase in income actually materializes [26] ”. It is important to highlight that there are historical examples that are clearly at odds with the aforementioned interpretive pattern.#p#分页标题#e# First, we have the Chilean 1977-1981 episode in which a crisis happened in spite of the fact that the fiscal balance was in surplus. After that, the Mexican case, in which the deterioration of the current account in the years preceding the 1994 crisis was largely due to a fall in private savings and a boom in private consumption. As we can see in Table 7, Asian countries had very high savings rates throughout the 90s. In many cases they had more than 30% of GDP, and in some cases also more than 40% of GDP. Table 7: Saving Rates (% of GDP) Source: Corsetti, Pesenti, Roubini (1998) Table 8 show that fiscal balance of the central government in most countries, had a surplus or simply a small deficit. Only China and Taiwan in 1996 had a central government deficit that was about 1% of GDP. Table 8: Government Fiscal Balances (%of GDP) Source: Corsetti, Pesenti, Roubini (1998) But the absence of fiscal imbalances in the year before crisis is misleading; the years preceding the crisis “were a period of excessive credit growth in the banking system, leading to a large stock of non-performing loans and the eventual collapse of several financial institutions [27] ”. After 1998, the total cost of “cleaning up the financial sector [28] ” (according to the First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF Stanley Fischer), amounted to 15% of GDP for several Asian economies [29] . The cleaning up of the financial sector aggravated the situation of the current account imbalances; this didn't appear on public deficits data until the eruption of the crisis. Inflation Also inflation is important in the analysis of current account and external debt sustainability; if the domestic inflation is above foreign inflation, with currency values fixed or semi-fixed, a real currency appreciation leads to a loss in cost-competitiveness; also the country can be exposed to a speculative attack. Here is shown data on inflation in a sample of Asian countries during the 90s: we can see that in all countries, the inflation rates were relatively low except in the Philippines, Hong Kong and China. Table 9: Inflation Rate Source: Corsetti, Pesenti, Roubini But for the Corsetti, Pesenti and Roubini analysis, the situation is more complex. Both banking and financial sector problems experienced a questioning of the capacity to continue to maintain inflation low. (RISCRIVI) In particular, the banking sector bailouts would require an increasing use of seignorage and infusions of liquidity. As a result, the nominal depreciations of Asian currencies in 1997 were in line with the expected inflationary consequences of banking and financial bailouts. That seems to be confirmed by ex-post data like in Indonesia and Malaysia where there were injections of liquidity into a banking system. Degree of openness to international trade There are two main reasons for which open economies are considered less likely to face sustainability problems: I- a large export sector, by generating foreign currency receipts, makes the country's ability to service its debt obligation stronger; II- costs of an economic and political crisis are relatively large, as the interdependence of the economy with the rest of the world is high [30] . But insuring greater openness makes a country more vulnerable to trade shocks. As we can see on table 10, most of the Asian countries were significantly open. The degree of openness is higher in Singapore and Hong Kong: above 100%. The lowest is Indonesia, around 27%. Table 10 : Openness (exports + Imports)/ 2 as a % of GDP Source: Corsetti, Pesenti, Roubini The real exchange rate performance Real exchange rate appreciation lessens the competitiveness of a country; it also can endanger its capability to sustain the current account DEFICIT . [31] As we can see from Table 11 the data on nominal exchange rates during the 90s differed widely across Asian countries. In Korea, the won depreciated in three years from 700 to 800 won per dollar; in Indonesia the rupiah/dollar rate fell from 1900 in 1990 to 2400 in 1997. The situation is different for Malaysia, in which the currency from 1990 to 1997 remained more or less the same. Also the Philippines and Thailand showed a more flexible exchange rate policy. Table 11:Nominal Exchange Rate ( to the USDollar) Period Average Source: Corsetti, Pesenti, Roubini (1998) The next table shows the real exchange rate data of our sample of Asian countries. We can see that in Korean and Taiwan the currency depreciated by 14% and 10%. In other countries, the real exchange rate appreciated: by 8% in Indonesia and by 30 % in Hong Kong, because of their more flexible exchange rate regime. From this data we can say that all the countries (except Korea) that crashed in 1997 had experienced a real appreciation; and it is also important to emphasize that the most OF the appreciation was after 1995, during the strengthening of the US dollar. It is important to note that countries that had an appreciation of currency had a worsening of the current account (like China and Taiwan). The only exception was Korea, which had current account deficit and a currency depreciation during the 90a. Table12 : Real Exchange Rate. End of Year data Source: Corsetti, Pesenti, Roubini (1998) The foreign debt The World Bank, which provides estimates of the external debt of developing countries every year, gets its information from the BIS series. The BIS series, which publishes a series presenting data on the liabilities and assets of domestic agents and another (published every six months) contains data on liabilities toward BIS banks. Finally, the OECD collects yearly data on the external liabilities of developing countries, which is available on both debt-service burden and the external liabilities of the Asian countries Looking at the World Bank data, as we can see from the table below, it is not easy to find any critical problems for the countries that were affected by the crisis. The debt-to-GDP for most countries was quite low and grew modestly: it was relatively high in Indonesia and in the Philippines, respectively 68% and 69% in 1991, and fell to 57% and 53% in 1995. In Taiwan and Singapore had no external debt. Table 13: Source:Corsetti, Pesenti, Roubini Taking a look at table 14, we can see that the share of short-term debt was modest: about 28% in Malaysia in 1996; about 25% in Korea in 1994, and the same in Indonesia in 1996; 19% in the Philippines in 1996 and in the same year about 41% in Thailand. Table 14 : Source Corsetti, Pesenti and Roubini focus on the debt service ratio that is defined as “the interest on all debt plus the principal to be to be repaid on long term debt as a share of total exports [32] ”. As we can see from table 15 it was well below 10% in many countries of the region in the 90s: only Indonesia , Philippines and Thailand were exceptions with ratios respectively above 30%, 20% and 13% . (SEI SICURA QUEST DATO MI SEMBRA STRANISSIMO)...L'ho controllato su CPR Table 15: Source: Corsetti, Pesenti, Roubini (1998) Looking at all the data that Corsetti, Pesenti and Roubini had analyzed, we can affirm that the macroeconomic indicator, like the GDP growth, the inflation, the investment rates etc., did not pose serious problems. Nevertheless, there were strong flows of foreign capital during the 90s: loans were primarily short and very short-term balancing the external debt. Furthermore, monetary policy was generally oriented to maintain a stable exchange rate with the dollar. Before making a conclusion, we can also look at the Radlet and Sachs theory, comparing it with the Corsetti, Pesenti and Roubini overview. I.III Radlet and Sachs overview Radelet and Sachs (DATA) focus on the Asian Financial Crisis, affirming, “the essence of the crisis was a huge, sudden reversal of capital flows [33] ”. “As a result of the creditor panic, the bank runs, and the sovereign downgrades, Korea, Indonesia and Thailand were thrown into partial debt defaults. In the case of Korea, these defaults were initially handled by an emergency standstill of debt repayments, followed by a concerted rollover of the short-term debt into longer-term instruments backed by Korean Government guarantees. This rollover applies to around one-third of the Korean external debt falling due in 1998. www.ukassignment.org.In the case of Indonesia, the defaults were unilateral, and have not been followed to this point by any negotiated arrangements. In Thailand, the extent of outright default remains unclear, though certain payments by non-bank borrowers are clearly in effective default [34] ”. From their point of view, an essential element of the Asian crisis was the role of the financial panic: “at the core of the crisis were large-scale foreign capital inflows into financial systems that became vulnerable to panic [35] ”.#p#分页标题#e# Radelet and Sachs will indicate that their reasons were to suppose, “the Asian financial crisis has substantial elements of panic and disorderly workout [36] ”: “the crisis was largely unanticipated. Although a small number of market participants were concerned ex ante, the vast majority of players did not view the Southeast Asian economies as bubbles waiting to burst. Second, the crisis involved considerable lending to debtors that were not protected by state guarantees, and those loans are now going bad in large numbers. To be sure, many borrowers did have explicit or implicit guarantees (or thought they did), but a substantial number of purely private banks and firms without such insurance are now facing bankruptcy. Third, the crisis has led to a seizing up of bank credits to viable enterprises, especially through the lack of working capital for exporters. Fourth, the market has reacted most positively to initiatives that bring creditors and debtors together for orderly workouts, such as in Korea. Fifth, the triggering events of the crisis involved the sudden withdrawal of investor funds to the region, rather than simply a deflation of asset values [37] . Financial process and macroeconomic situation of the Asian crisis The first important element of the Asian financial crisis is the rapid reversal of private capital inflows into Asia [38] . In Table 16 we can see “an estimated breakdown of the reversal of flows” for the five countries most affected by the crisis: Korea, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Table 16 We can see that net private inflows “dropped from $93 billion to -$12.1 billion, a swing of $105 billion on a combined pre-shock GDP of approximately $935 billion, or a swing of 11 percent of GDP. $77 billion of the $105 billion decline in inflows came from commercial bank lending. Direct investment remained constant at around $7 billion. The rest of the decline has come from a $24 billion fall of portfolio equity and a $5 billion decline in non-bank lending” [39] . After the drop in bank lending there was a period of “large increases in cross-border bank loans [40] ”; we can see that in Tables 17 and 18. In only one year, from 1995 to 1996, the total of foreign bank lending had a 24% increase: from $210 billion to $261 billion. One year later, in 1997, bank lending expanded further to 10%. As we can see in the TABLES, there was a strong reversal in a very short period for which Radelet and Sachs affirm, “it is very difficult to attribute a reversal of this magnitude in such a short period of time to changes in underlying economic fundamentals [41] ”. As shown in table 17, the bank lending during these periods went both to domestic banks and domestic non-bank borrowers. According to Radelet and Sachs: “We might suppose that international banks assumed that lending to banks was at least partly protected by lender-of-last-resort facilities, both domestic (e.g. from the central bank) and international (e.g. from the IMF). The same might be true for a portion of private sector firms with particularly strong political connections. There is no reason to suppose, however, that foreign banks expected such guarantees on lending to the majority of non-bank private corporations. Notably, lending to non-banks as well as to banks continued to increase strongly until mid-1997 [42] ”. So, for Radelet and Sachs, there were macroeconomic imbalances, widespread corruption, and weak financial institutions, but the East Asian crisis derives from the vulnerability TO financial panic, that arose from weaknesses in these economies; in addition, there are a series of policy miss-steps and accidents that lead to the panic. In fact, they said that the macroeconomic and other problems had been well known for years. But despite this, Asia was able to attract $211 billion of capital inflows in the year before the crisis. |
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