Working Papers
1999
November 1, 1999
Has the Nature of Crises Changed? A Quarter Century of Currency Crises in Argentina
Description: The recent turmoil in currency markets in Asia, Europe, and Latin America has given a new impetus to the literature on currency crises. The literature originally linked currency crises to deteriorating economic fundamentals, but has more recently focused on self-fulfilling expectations and contagion. To assess the changing roles of domestic and external market fundamentals and contagion, this paper examines seven major currency crises in Argentina. It finds that while crises in the 1970s and 1980s were driven mainly by monetary and fiscal policies at home and abroad, contagion played an important role in the 1990s.
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1999
October 1, 1999
Portfolio Diversification, Leverage, and Financial Contagion
Description: Models of “contagion” rely on market imperfections to explain why adverse shocks in one asset market might be associated with asset sales in many unrelated markets. This paper demonstrates that contagion can be explained with basic portfolio theory without recourse to market imperfections. It also demonstrates that “Value-at-Risk” portfolio management rules do not have significantly different consequences for portfolio rebalancing and contagion than other rules. The paper’s main conclusion is that portfolio diversification and leverage may be sufficient to explain why investors would find it optimal to sell many higher-risk assets when a shock to one asset occurs.
October 1, 1999
Country Risks and the Investment Activity of U.S. Multinationals in Developing Countries
Description: This paper develops a simple real options model that demonstrates the role of country-specific risk and sunk costs in determining a multinational’s choice between exports and foreign investment. The hypotheses from the model are tested for the distribution of capital expenditures by U.S.-owned foreign affiliates in 29 developing countries during 1984–95. Political and economic risk ratings are identified as deterrents to foreign capital formation; scale economies, unit wage differentials, trade openness, and agglomeration effects are found to be stimulating. These findings provide an additional rationale for a multilateral investment agreement that could function as an agency of restraint.