Episodes Of Currency Crises Research Articles

Real Exchange Rate Misalignments and Currency Crises in the Former Soviet Union Countries

The paper explores the utility of real exchange rate misalignments from their equilibrium for identification of currency crises in the former Soviet Union countries. We estimate equilibrium exchange rates for 10 former Soviet Republics employing behavioural equilibrium exchange rate (BEER) and natural real exchange rate (NATREX) concepts and pooled mean group estimator. Subsequently, we compare the estimated misalignments before, during and after the currency crisis episodes and regress the misalignments on crisis-related variables. The results indicate that the misalignments tended to increase before the crises and visibly reduced after, thus serving as potentially viable predictors of such events.

IDENTIFICATION AND ASSESSMENT OF CURRENCY CRISES IN THE REPUBLIC OF SERBIA

The aim of the paper is to identify the episodes of currency crises in the Republic of Serbia using the exchange market pressure (EMP) index. The country's resilience to currency crises prevents the collapse of the currency and the transfer of negative effects to the entire financial and real sector, so the research and assessment of the factors of currency crises is extremely important. The survey shows that the strongest strikes on the Serbian dinar were in the period of the global financial crisis in 2008, so that adjusting to shocks from abroad is crucial for the sustainability of the applied managed floating exchange rate regime. On the other hand, the stability of the national currency depends mainly on the achieved macroeconomic results, which are presented globally using the misery index.

Welfare costs of bilateral currency crises: The role of international trade

AbstractThis paper shows that bilateral currency crises reduce bilateral trade up to 50% after controlling for the depreciation rate. Using a trade model, these reductions are connected to the welfare costs of currency crises. The results show that a single currency crisis can result in welfare reductions through changes in international trade corresponding to more than 10% (and up to 41%) of the costs of autarky for 23 different currency crisis episodes between 1960 and 2014. These welfare costs are also shown to be greater than the welfare gains from having free trade agreements and using common currencies for 25 different currency crisis episodes.

Welfare Costs of Bilateral Currency Crises: The Role of International Trade

This paper shows that bilateral currency crises reduce bilateral trade up to 50% after controlling for the depreciation rate. Using a trade model, these reductions are connected to the welfare costs of currency crises. The results show that a single currency crisis can result in welfare reductions through changes in international trade corresponding to more than 10% (and up to 41%) of the costs of autarky for 23 different currency crisis episodes between 1960 and 2014. These welfare costs are also shown to be greater than the welfare gains from having free trade agreements and using common currencies for 25 different currency crisis episodes.

КРАХ ВАЛЮТ ТА ІНФЛЯЦІЙНІ КРИЗИ: СПЕЦИФІКА В УКРАЇНІ ТА ОЦІНКА ВЗАЄМОЗВ’ЯЗКІВ

Присвячено питанням кількісної ідентифікації валютних та інфляційних криз. У результаті оцінки наявних емпіричних досліджень були зроблені теоретичні узагальнення щодо етапів і типології валютних криз. Типи сучасних валютних криз: проблеми платіжного балансу, кризи фінансового надлишку, проблеми суверенного боргу, дефіцит державного бюджету, криза «раптової зупинки», самодостатні кризи.Визначено основні епізоди валютних криз в Україні та їхні причини. Це криза в 1993—1995 роках, пов’язана iз загальною економічною кризою після проголошення Україною незалежності; криза 1998—1999 років, викликана дефіцитом поточного рахунку і негативним впливом азійської фінансової кризи; криза 2008 року, що відбулася через збільшення зовнішнього боргу, кредитний бум, скорочення іноземних інвестицій і негативний вплив світової фінансової кризи; криза у 2014—2015 роках, що пов’язана головним чином із зовнішніми політичними шоками.Визначено взаємозв’язки між динамікою валютного курсу та інфляцією з використанням тесту на причинність Грейнджера. Індикатори індексу цін виробників, індексу споживчих цін і динаміки обмінного курсу використовувались як змінні в рівняннях причинності Грейнджера. Установлено, що в Україні динаміка валютного курсу спричиняє зростання цін (інфляцію) із лагом в один місяць.Визначено пороговий рівень інфляції для української економіки. Якщо індекс споживчих цін перевищує рівень 32 %, економічне зростання навряд чи буде можливим.Доведено, що виникнення валютних криз в Україні викликано шоковими явищами, а глибина їхніх наслідків пов’язана зі слабкістю національної економіки. За таких умов антикризова політика повинна бути спрямована на підтримку експортноорієнтованих галузей, усунення структурних диспропорцій в економіці, зниження рівня зовнішнього боргу і забезпечення інноваційного розвитку.

Currency Crises and Purchasing Power Parity in the Asian Countries: Evidence Based on Second-Generation Panel Unit-Root Tests

This study applies a second-generation panel unit-root tests to determine the stochastic properties of real exchange rates for 14 Asian countries. Based on three popular alternative definitions of a currency crisis, we identify the several important currency crisis episodes in the region. The purchasing power parity (PPP) hypothesis was overwhelmingly supported after accommodating these heterogeneous noisy and unstable observations. Our panel unit-root test that controls for cross-sectional dependence and is robust to structural breaks confirms that the crisis in all the countries fits well with the second-generation models of currency crisis, that is, the root cause of the currency crises may not lie in economic fundamentals. PPP relation emerges when breaks and cross country dependency has been taken into account for these 14 countries.

Comparing the Performance of Logit and Probit Early Warning Systems for Currency Crises in Emerging Market Economies

We compare how logit (fixed effects) and probit early warning systems (EWS) predict in-sample and out-of-sample currency crises in emerging markets (EMs). We look at episodes of currency crises that took place in 29 EMs between January 1995 and December 2012. Stronger real GDP growth rates and higher net foreign assets signifi cantly reduce the probability of experiencing a currency crisis, while high levels of credit to the private sector increase it. We find that the logit and probit EWS out-of-sample performances are broadly similar, and that the EWS performance can be very sensitive both to the size of the estimation sample, and to the crisis definition employed. For macroeconomic policy purposes, we conclude that a currency crisis definition identifying more rather than less crisis episodes should be used, even if this may lead to the risk of issuing false alarms.

Is monetary policy effective in dampening fiscally induced exchange market pressures? Evidence from Ghana

Episodes of currency crises in Ghana over the recent past were examined. We also address two fundamental questions using VAR framework. First, how does fiscal policy relate to exchange market pressures (EMPs) in Ghana? Second, whether persistent fiscal slippages hinder the effective use of interest rate as monetary policy tool to influence undesirable exchange rate fluctuations? We found sterilization interventions to be more effective than interest rate as a monetary policy tool in moderating tensions in foreign exchange market. Higher recurrent expenditure was generally associated with higher EMP, while capital expenditures tend to assuage EMP. We recommend strong policy coordination between the fiscal and monetary authorities to ensure macroeconomic stability.

Assessing Indicators of Currency Crisis in Ethiopia: Signals Approach

AbstractCurrency crises, generally defined as rapid depreciations of a local currency or loss of foreign exchange reserves, are common incidents in modern monetary systems. Due to their repeated occurrence and severity, they have earned wide coverage by both theoretical and empirical literature. However, unlike advanced and emerging economies, currency crises in low‐income countries have not received due attention. This paper uses the signals approach developed by Kaminsky et al. () and assesses currency crisis in Ethiopia over the time frame January 1970 to December 2008. Using the Exchange Market Pressure Index (EMPI), we identify three currency crisis episodes that coincide with the liberalization following the fall of Ethiopian socialism, the Ethio‐Eritrean border conflict, and the zenith of the global financial crisis. The timing shows the importance of both local and international dynamics. More macroeconomic indicators picked up the first crisis in a 24‐month signalling window, compared to the latter two. Three categories of indicators were used: current account, capital account and domestic financial sector. None of the capital account indicators were significant based on the noise‐to‐signal ratio rule. One possible explanation for this might be the weak integration of the Ethiopian economy with global capital markets.

Comparing the Performance of Logit and Probit Early Warning Systems for Currency Crises in Emerging Market Economies

We compare how logit (fixed effects) and probit early warning systems (EWS) predict in-sample and out-of-sample currency crises in emerging markets (EMs). We look at episodes of currency crises that took place in 29 EMs between January 1995 and December 2012. Stronger real GDP growth rates and higher net foreign assets significantly reduce the probability of experiencing a currency crisis, while high levels of credit to the private sector increase it. We find that the logit and probit EWS out-of-sample performances are broadly similar, and that the EWS performance can be very sensitive both to the size of the estimation sample, and to the crisis definition employed. For macroeconomic policy purposes, we conclude that a currency crisis definition identifying more rather than less crisis episodes should be used, even if this may lead to the risk of issuing false alarms.

On the Epidemic of Financial Crises

SummaryThe paper proposes a framework for modelling financial contagion that is based on susceptible–infected–recovered transmission models from epidemic theory. This class of models addresses two important features of contagion modelling, which are a common shortcoming of most existing empirical approaches, namely the direct modelling of the inherent dependences that are involved in the transmission mechanism, and an associated canonical measure of crisis severity. The methodology proposed naturally implies a control mechanism, which is required when evaluating prospective immunization policies that intend to mitigate the effect of a crisis. It can be implemented not only as a way of learning from past experiences, but also at the onset of a contagious financial crisis. The approach is illustrated on a number of currency crisis episodes, using both historical final outcome and temporal data. The latter require the introduction of a novel hierarchical model that we call the hidden epidemic model and which embeds the stochastic financial epidemic as a latent process. The empirical results suggest, among others, an increasing trend for global transmission of currency crises over time.

On the Epidemic of Financial Crises

This paper proposes a framework for modelling financial contagion that is based on SIR (Susceptible-Infected-Recovered) transmission models from epidemic theory. This class of models addresses two important features of contagion modelling, which are a common shortcoming of most existing empirical approaches, namely the direct modelling of the inherent dependencies involved in the transmission mechanism, and an associated canonical measure of crisis severity. The proposed methodology naturally implies a control mechanism, which is required when evaluating prospective immunisation policies that intend to mitigate the impact of a crisis. It can be implemented not only as a way of learning from past experiences, but also at the onset of a contagious financial crisis. The approach is illustrated on a number of currency crisis episodes, using both historical final outcome and temporal data. The latter require the introduction of a novel hierarchical model that we call the Hidden Epidemic Model (HEM), and which embeds the stochastic financial epidemic as a latent process. The empirical results suggest, among others, an increasing trend for global transmission of currency crises over time.

The study of contagious paces of financial crises

This study deals with the emergence of different regional crises and the comparison of early warning indicators to check for the accuracy of pace of exits. It was found that trade factors and monetary conditions clearly play a pivotal role in affecting the probability of existing time to currency crisis episodes and on the recurrence of crises. More specifically, using the index of market pressure methods, it is likely that the Asian Financial Crisis and the Mexico Tequila Crisis, when compared with the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) Crisis, were preceded by different spreads accelerating across those countries. The evidence suggests that efficient early warning indicators may exist and may be identified depending on the methods applied to the pace of exit involved.

Early‐warning analysis for currency crises in emerging markets: A revisit with fuzzy clustering

AbstractCurrency crises, also often called balance‐of‐payment crises, occur when massive capital outflows force a country to devalue or float its currency. The world‐wide integration of capital markets since the 1980s and 1990s has increased the degree of capital mobility, which also determined a substantial turbulence in foreign exchange markets and frequent currency crises. In this paper, we explore advanced supporting instruments for predicting currency crises, based on an empirical study of the currency crisis episodes in 23 emerging markets around the world during the second half of last century. More specifically, we investigate the usefulness of prediction models built based on the fuzzy c‐means method. First we build clustering models that partition data into a certain number of overlapping natural groups. Thereafter, we classify the data clusters into early‐warning clusters and tranquil clusters. We compare the performance of our models with a conventional c‐means clustering model and a benchmark probit model. The results show that the proposed models achieve a similar level of out‐of‐sample performance as the probit model and c‐means model. The fuzzy approach also introduces additional explanatory advantages into the early‐warning analysis process. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Indicators of Currency Crisis: Empirical Analysis of Some Emerging and Transition Economies

This paper focuses on the measurement of a contemporaneous currency crisis. The analysis covers 14 or transforming economies that experienced episodes of currency crises over the last decade. It adds to well-known examples relatively littleknown evidence on the crisis depth in some of the CIS countries. Following the Eichengreen, Rose, and Wyplosz (1994) definition of a currency crisis, the emphasis is primarily put on the examination of changes in relative reserves, exchange rates, and real interest rates during periods of exchange rate pressure. Other measures of the depth of a currency crisis as well as measures of external vulnerability are also discussed. The findings support the adequacy of the Eichengreen, Rose, and Wyplosz (1994) definition in analyzing crisis developments in emerging economies.

The Episodes of Currency Crises in the European Transition Economies

The series of currency crises which hit several developing countries in the 1990s did not leave the emerging market economies of Central and Eastern Europe unscathed. However, contrary to the experience of Mexico in 1995 and South East Asia in 1997-1998, the roots of the crises in our region were usually less sophisticated and easier to identify. Most crisis episodes in the former communist countries fit nicely with the ”first generation” canonical model elaborated in 1979 by Paul Krugman and developed in 1980s by other economists. In this model, fiscal imbalances are the main factor leading to depleting international reserves of the central bank and speculative attacks against national currencies.This was the main reason behind all currency crises in our region, very often closely related to serious microeconomic weaknesses and delays in structural and institutional reforms. The only minor exception was the Czech Republic where the devaluation crisis in May 1997 (of rather limited magnitude) was caused by over-borrowing of the enterprise sector, an unreformed financial sector, and political turmoil rather than by fiscal imbalances and an excessively expansionary monetary policy. This volume, following another collection of similar monographs related to Latin American and Asian regions, presents five episodes of currency crises in Eastern Europe in the second half of 1990s. Four of them were related to post-communist economies and one (Turkey) to a developing economy aiming to integrate with the EU and suffering many macroeconomic and structural weaknesses similar to those of the transition group. Bulgaria in 1996-1997 represents the first episode of a full-scale financial crisis, involving drastic currency devaluation and near-hyperinflation, a banking crisis and a near default on debt obligations. The roots of the crisis were fully domestic and, although severe, were restricted to Bulgaria.Russia's financial crisis in August 1998, despite similar characteristics and domestic roots as in Bulgaria, had an important international dimension. On the one hand, the first speculative attacks against the ruble in the fall of 1997 were triggered by crisis events in Asia, particularly in Hong Kong and Korea. On the other hand, when the Russian crisis erupted, it provoked a huge contagion effect across all the countries of the former USSR. It also caused a big turmoil on all segments of the international financial market, bringing the danger of a recession in the US and other developed countries, and triggering a currency crisis in Brazil few months later.The monographs on Ukraine and Moldova present two case studies of such a contagion effect. However, one should remember that these two economies (as well as most other FSU economies) experienced the same weaknesses and vulnerabilities as in Russia. Thus Russian events could only accelerate the crisis in these countries which was, in any event, hard to avoid. Finally, we present the analysis of the recent financial market crisis in Turkey, which fortunately has been stopped by fast and substantial IMF and World Bank support and has not evolved into a full-scale currency crisis.

The Episodes of Currency Crisis in Latin American and Asian Economies

This volume presents six monographs of currency crisis episodes in two Latin American countries in 1994-1995 (Mexico and Argentine) and four Asian countries in 1997-1998 (Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Korea). The Asian part of this volume is supplemented with a short comparative note, commenting these four monographs. All the studies were prepared under the research project no. OI44/H02/99/17 on Analysis of Currency Crises in Countries of Asia, Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe: Lessons for Poland and Other Transition Countries, carried out by CASE and financed by the Committee for Scientific Research (KBN) in the years 1999-2001. They were subjects of public presentation and discussion during the seminar in Warsaw organized by CASE on December 21, 2000, under the same research project. In the all analyzed cases currency crises were accompanied by other signs of financial turbulence such as (public and/or private) debt crisis or banking crisis. However, the limited scope of the conducted analysis forced the research team to concentrate on the currency crises and refer to banking and debt crisis only as the background or consequence of the currency devaluation. This collection of papers will be followed by another volume presenting episodes of currency crises in the European transition economies

Crisis and Consumption Smoothing

The dramatic impact of the current crisis on performance of businesses across sectors and economies have been headlining the business press for the past many months. Interestingly, the impact of the crisis across categories of goods/services and across economies reveals several interesting patterns. Extant reconciliations of these patterns in the popular press rely on ad-hoc reasoning. Using historical data on currency crisis episodes across the world, this paper shows that the observed patterns in the impact of a crisis across classes of goods and economies are a consequence of active smoothing of consumption expenditures by consumers. The results reveal that consumer behavior in a crisis is characterized by consumption smoothing at various levels - inter-temporal, inter-category and intra-category. In sum, these behavioral adjustments result in significant reallocation of consumption expenditures. More importantly, the smoothing decisions due to a crisis are distinct and independent of the impact of changes in income and prices that accompany a crisis. Interestingly, there is marked variation in the patterns of consumption smoothing across different types of economies. Taken together, these results have important and interesting implications for managers, policy makers and academics.

Crisis and Consumption Smoothing

The dramatic impact of the current crisis on performance of businesses across sectors and economies has been headlining the business press for the past several months. Extant reconciliations of these patterns in the popular press rely on ad hoc reasoning. Using historical data on currency crisis episodes across the world, we show that the impact of the crisis on a firm's business is best understood by focusing on the impact of the crisis on the behavior of consumers. Our analyses show that consumer behavior in a crisis is characterized by consumption smoothing at various levels—intertemporal, intercategory, and intracategory. These behavioral adjustments result in significant reallocation of consumption expenditures. More importantly, the smoothing decisions because of a crisis are distinct and independent of the impact of changes in income and prices that accompany a crisis. Interestingly, there is marked variation in the patterns of consumption smoothing across different types of economies. Taken together, these results have important and interesting implications for managers, policy makers, and academics.

The theoretical link between Capital Account liberalization and Currency Crisis Episodes

The paper investigates theoretical background if countries with unregulated capital flows are more vulnerable to currency crises. In order to solve this question properly the paper considers sequence, precondition of the Capital Account Liberalization process and different generation of currency crisis models. Furthermore, theoretical studies pointed that the speed and sequence of the CAL process needs to be adequate for the country financial development and financial liberalization.