Working Paper No. 212
By Michael Chui, Simon Hall and Ashley Taylor
Many emerging market economy (EME) financial crises in the 1990s quickly spread to other countries. By contrast, spillovers from the Argentina crisis in 2001-02 appear to have been much more limited. Why do some crises spread widely and others do not? This paper stresses the joint importance of intra-EME linkages, related country-specific vulnerabilities and investor behaviour. This framework provides insights into some potential reasons behind the differing extent of spillovers in two case studies - Asia 1997-98 and Argentina 2001-02. It also highlights the need for further analysis of the less easily measurable elements of the framework, in particular changes in investor behaviour.
Crisis spillovers in emerging market economies: interlinkages, vulnerabilities and investor behaviour