scholarly journals Financial Crisis in East Asia: Bank Runs, Asset Bubbles and Antidotes

Author(s):  
Marcus H. Miller ◽  
Pongsak Luangaram
1998 ◽  
Vol 165 ◽  
pp. 66-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus Miller ◽  
Pongsak Luangaram

No one can deny the outstanding success of the East Asian economies in the last two decades of rapid economic growth backed by surging capital inflows. Key questions posed by the current crisis are: what went wrong, and why? how to fix it? and, how to prevent a recurrence? To answer them, the article begins with a brief overview of recent developments in the miracle economies of East Asia, focusing mainly on Korea, Indonesia and Thailand. We focus too on some of the shadows that came to darken the glittering success story—on declining competitiveness and growing financial vulnerability; and on regulatory failures in banking. Then we take a leaf from Charles Kindleberger's book (1996) on Panics, Manias and Crashes and discuss—with historical precedents—various types of financial crisis: speculative attacks on pegged exchange rates, asset bubbles, stock market crashes and bank runs. Based on the distinction between illiquidity, due to a shortage of cash, and insolvency arising from a failure of economic prospects, we go on to outline three main views of the current crisis.First that it was simply due to reversal of capital flows, to a failure of collective action on the part of creditors which could and should have been solved by supplying extra liquidity—or by forcing creditors to roll over their loans. Second the view that the miracle had grown into a bubble that had finally had to burst: so the problem was essentially one of insolvency. Finally the view that we prefer, that the panic was not wholly groundless (and rescue efforts were bound to be difficult) mainly because weak regulation combined with implicit deposit guarantees had left local bankers free to gamble with the money that global capital markets had poured into their parlours. Panic set in when foreign depositors realised that there were not enough dollar reserves left for the guarantee to be credible. This account (championed most notably by Paul Krugman of MIT) involves both illiquidity and insolvency and helps to explain why the IMF was unwilling simply to throw money at the problem.Why did the crisis spread like wildfire around the region? Was it because a bank run due to shaky fundamentals in one country was imitated elsewhere, as investors joined the herd heading for the exit? This and other accounts of contagion are discussed before turning to ideas for crisis prevention and management, and a brief account of future prospects for the region. The article concludes by outlining immediate steps to resolve the current financial crisis and by proposing international monetary reforms to prevent a recurrence.


Author(s):  
Christopher Henderson ◽  
William W. Lang ◽  
William E. Jackson

Author(s):  
E. Kanaev ◽  
A. Kurilko

The 1997–1998 financial crisis brought the issue of necessity to implement deep structural reforms to the agenda in South-East Asia countries. Domestic consumption encouragement, increase of cooperation between different countries' real sectors of economy and strengthening the role of the ASEAN countries in both anti-crisis arrangements and arriving at consensus on interaction with communication partners became focus areas. The detailed specification of measures assumed by particular countries of the region to mitigate crisis effects, stabilize economy and formulate a strategy of economic growth is presented in the article.


2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-51
Author(s):  
Kee Hoon Chung

Theories on institutional change assert that exogenous shocks are critical in transforming path-dependent institutions. There is not much empiric research, however, that has investigated whether that is indeed the case. To fill this gap, this study investigates the effects of institutional quality on economic growth with a focus on East Asia before and after the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, which delivered a critical shock in economic activities and institutions in East Asia. Using panel data analysis from 1981 and 2007, I investigate whether the effect of institutional quality on economic growth differed in East Asia compared to rest of the world before the crisis and whether such relationship changed after the crisis. Using two-way fixed effects model, the estimation shows that the effect of institutional quality on economic growth was positive on average for the rest of the world after the crisis but negative for East Asia. The negative coefficient was particularly strong for the three countries—South Korea, Indonesia, and Thailand—that suffered the most during the crisis. However, in the long term, there was no significant change of this negative effect.


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