Economic performance, crisis and institutional reforms in East Asia and Latin America

Abstract

As many as 109 financial crises occurred between 1980 and 1999, according to an original survey by the World Bank. This fact suggests that the world economy has entered a stage of instability and uncertainty following the 1980s (https://www.worldbank.org/html" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://www.worldbank.org/html). Indeed, a debt crisis hit Latin America in the early 1980s, while East Asia – Northeast Asia plus Southeast Asia – also suffered a long-term economic recession due to the resulting worldwide recession. In the first half of the 1990s, an economic crisis affected Russia and Eastern Europe while they underwent institutional reforms aimed at transforming their economic systems from centrally planned economies to market-oriented ones. In the mid-1990s, a currency crisis again attacked Latin America, particularly Mexico. In 1997 a currency and financial crisis took place in East Asia, ending an economic boom that had continued since the end of the 1980s.