توقف ناگهانی و موج مکزیکی: بحران ارز، معکوسهای جریان سرمایه و کاهش خروجی در بازارهای نوظهور

Sudden stops are the simultaneous occurrence of a currency/balance of payments crisis with a reversal in capital flows. We investigate whether sudden-stop crises are a unique phenomenon and whether they entail an especially large and abrupt pattern of output collapse (a “Mexican wave”). Using a panel data set over 1975–1997 and covering 24 emerging-market economies, we distinguish between the output effects of currency crises, capital inflow reversals, and sudden-stop crises. Sudden-stop crises have a large negative, but short-lived, impact on output growth over and above that found with currency crises. A currency crisis typically reduces output by about 2–3%, while a sudden stop reduces output by an additional 6–8% in the year of the crisis. The cumulative output loss of a sudden stop is even larger, around 13–15% over a 3-year period. Our model estimates correspond closely to the output dynamics of the ‘Mexican wave’ (such as seen in Mexico in 1995, Turkey in 1994 and elsewhere), and out-of-sample predictions of the model explain well the sudden (and seemingly unexpected) collapse in output associated with the 1997–1998 Asian Crisis.

Sudden stops in capital flows to emerging market economies are a key characteristic of several recent financial crises. The sudden stop problem, first emphasized by Calvo (1998), features an abrupt cessation in foreign capital inflows and/or a sharp capital outflow concurrently with a currency/balance of payments crisis. Calvo et al. (2002), for example, provide a sudden-stop interpretation for the current crisis in Argentina in which the capital flow reversal together with a dramatic real exchange rate depreciation significantly worsened the government's fiscal position and led to default. In a broad historical examination, Bordo et al. (2001) argue that the sudden stop problem has become more severe since the abandonment of the gold standard in the early 1970s. Kaminsky (2003) argues that sudden stops are a special variety of currency crisis. Finally, Mendoza and Smith (2002) define three key features of Sudden Stops: “sharp reversals in capital inflows and current account deficits, large downward adjustments in domestic production and absorption, and collapses in asset prices and in the relative prices of nontradable goods relative to tradables” (p. 1). An examination of the data reveals that many currency/balance of payments crises are not characterized by sudden stops ( Table 1). Capital inflow reversals occur with some regularity in emerging markets (about 22% of the observations in our sample), and currency crises are also fairly common (11% of the observations). But many currency crises do not occur jointly with a capital flow reversal—those episodes we term sudden stops. Sudden stops occur in only about 6% of the observations in our sample of emerging market economies and constitute a bit more than half of the number of currency crises we identified. By our metric, there have been 34 episodes of sudden stops among emerging markets since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rate parities in the early 1970s till before the 1997 Asian crisis and another 10 between 1998 and 2002. With the higher threshold levels for ‘major’ crises shown in the lower panel, the frequency of occurrences is lower but the basic pattern is the same as with the standard crisis definitions. Clearly, sudden-stop crises are not one and the same as currency crises nor are capital flow reversals. It is not uncommon to have capital flow reversals without currency crises and vice versa. Sudden stops are clearly distinct phenomena.Sudden stops may have severe consequences for the economy, as the abrupt reversal in foreign credit inflows in conjunction with a realignment of the exchange rate may cause a sharp drop in domestic investment, domestic production and employment. The adverse consequences of a sharp reversal in foreign capital inflows could be the reason that only a subset of currency/balance-of-payments crises in emerging market economies are found to be associated with recessions (Hutchison and Noy, 2002a, Hutchison and Noy, in press and Gupta et al., 2003). The pattern of a currency crisis followed by an abrupt, but short lived, output collapse has been termed the “Mexican Wave” by the Financial Times in light of the Mexican experience in 1995. Recent theoretical literature, following the work of Calvo (1998) and Calvo and Reinhart (2000), emphasizes the linkages between sudden stops and output losses. By contrast with the theoretical literature, the empirical literature to date has not clearly distinguished between the different types of currency/balance of payments crises, and in particular has not focused on the link between capital flow reversals and currency crises—what we believe is a natural way to define a sudden stop. We believe that focusing on the joint occurrence of reversals and currency crises may help explain the mixed results of studies attempting to measure the output effects of financial crises. Analysis of sudden stops may provide the key to understanding why some currency crises entail very large output losses, while others are frequently followed by expansions. To address this issue, we investigate the output growth dynamics following currency crises, capital flow reversals and Sudden Stops in a panel data set of 24 emerging-market economies covering the 1975–1997 period. We measure the impact of crises in a panel regression framework, carefully controlling for domestic and external factors, country time-invariant effects, and state of the business cycle. Simultaneity between financial crises and output growth and biases arising from the estimation of a dynamic panel are likely in this context, and we employ the panel IV and GMM estimation procedures, respectively, of Hausman and Taylor (1981) and Arellano and Bond, 1991 and Arellano and Bond, 1998 to address these issues. We find that sudden-stop crises have a large negative, but short-lived, impact on output growth over and above the effect found with currency crises. Our results also correspond very closely with the output dynamics of the ‘Mexican wave’ (such as seen in Mexico in 1995, Turkey in 1994 and elsewhere), and out-of-sample predictions of the model explain the sudden (and seemingly unexpected) collapse in output associated with the 1997–1998 Asian Crisis. Our study supports the hypothesis that sudden stops have a much larger adverse effect on output than other forms of currency attack. Ours is the first empirical study that we are aware of to statistically differentiate between the output effects of different crises types and rigorously measure this effect. Our results possibly explain the wide divergence in economies' performances following international financial crises. Furthermore, we believe that establishing this empirical regularity is the first step in empirically identifying the transmission mechanism through which sudden stops have such large output effects. Section 2 reviews the literature on sudden stops and highlights our contribution. Section 3 presents the basic empirical model. Section 4 discusses the data. Section 5 reports summary statistics and the primary empirical results of the study. This section presents estimation results of the output equations, model dynamics and robustness checks. Section 6 presents evidence as to the channel through which a sudden stop in capital inflows affects the real economy, how well the dynamics of the model correspond with the Mexican Wave pattern, and also present predictions for output development for the out-of-sample East Asian crisis of 1997–1998. Section 7 concludes the paper.

Recent work by Calvo (1998), Kaminsky (2003) and others suggests that the fundamental causes of a currency crisis associated with sudden reversals in capital flows are empirically distinguishable from other varieties of currency crisis. We argue that the effects on output dynamics associated with different forms of currency crisis are also likely to vary, and may explain the wide variety of experiences across countries. Using a panel data set over the 1975–1997 period and covering 24 emerging markets, we distinguish between the output dynamics associated with currency crises, capital flow reversals, and sudden stops. We find that sudden stops have a large negative, but short-lived, impact on output growth; and that these effects are substantially larger (almost three times greater) than those associated with a currency crisis alone. The Mexican Wave pattern that the empirical model predicts was seen not only in Mexico at the time of the 1995 crisis, but also in such disparate countries facing sudden stops as Turkey, Indonesia and Korea. The evidence we present on the channel of transmission appears consistent with theory that points to an external “credit crunch” as a key element in capital flow reversals at the time of a currency crisis. Sudden stops are associated with a collapse of imported goods and a dramatic fall in domestic investment. Clearly, the large output costs associated with sudden stops are a policy concern; even more so if the underlying cause of the capital inflow reversal and currency crisis are not attributable to “fundamentals” but rather to multiple equilibria or imperfections in the working of international capital markets. The sudden-stop phenomenon helps us to understand why some currency/balance of payments crisis entail very large output losses in some emerging market economies, while others are frequently followed by expansions. Our study supports the hypothesis that sudden stops have a much larger adverse effect on output than other forms of currency attack–the first empirical study that we are aware of using dynamic panel methods to rigorously differentiate between the output costs of alternative varieties of crises in developing economies and to measure these effects–and explains the wide divergence in economies' performances following international financial crises.