Emerging Capital Markets in Turmoil

Since the mid-1990s, emerging market economies have been hit by dramatic highs and lows: lifted by large capital inflows, then plunged into chaos by constrained credit and out-of-control exchange rates. The conventional wisdom about such crises is strongly influenced by the experience of advanced economies. In Emerging Capital Markets in Turmoil, Guillermo Calvo examines these issues instead from the perspective of emerging market economies themselves, taking into account the limitations and vulnerabilities these economies confront. A succession of crises -- Mexico in 1994-5, East Asia in 1997, Russia in 1998, and Argentina in 2001 -- prompted an urgent search in economic policy circles for cogent explanations. Calvo begins by laying the groundwork for a new approach to these issues. In the theoretical chapters that follow, he argues that financial crisis theory regarding emerging markets has progressed from focusing on such variables as fiscal deficits, debt sustainability, and real currency devaluation to stressing the role of the financial sector -- emphasizing stocks rather than flows as well as the role credibility plays in containing financial crises. He then returns to a more empirical analysis and focuses on exchange-rate issues, considering the advantages and disadvantages of flexible exchange rates for emerging market economies. Coming after a decade of ongoing crises, Calvo's timely reassessment of the importance of external factors in making emerging market economies safer from financial turmoil offers important policy lessons for dealing with inevitable future episodes of financial crises. Guillermo A. Calvo is Distinguished University Professor and the Director of the Center for International Economics at the University of Maryland. Since 2001 he has served as Chief Economist and Manager of the Research Department at the Inter-American Development Bank. He is the author of Money, Exchange Rates, and Output (MIT Press, 1996)."An important collection of essays from a leading scholar whose original and unconventional ideas on emerging market debt crises have increasingly become the conventional wisdom." --Kenneth S. Rogoff, Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy, Department of Economics, Harvard University "Guillermo Calvo not only thinks outside the box, he develops highly useful models there, as these papers on contagion, sudden stops, and what to do about them so wonderfully demonstrate. You cannot do effective policy work, let alone research, in international finance without the benefit of ideas like the ones in this thoughtful and well-organized collection." --John B. Taylor, Stanford University "This book represents Guillermo Calvo's work at its best. It combines a deep understanding of the events and factors involved in emerging markets' struggle with capital flow volatility, an unmatched ability to isolate and illuminate the essence of the phenomena in question, and an exciting irreverence towards misguided conventional wisdom. Essential for anyone interested in emerging markets and, more broadly, in connecting insightful theories with reality." --Ricardo J. Caballero, Ford International Professor of Economics, MIT View All Endorsements