This paper examines how increased uncertainty about an emerging market's international reserves affects the willingness of foreign investors to supply international credits. We illustrate the relevance of this concern for South Korea during the recent financial crisis. Using available information about Korea's reserves at the onset of the crisis, we show that 'usable' reserves turned out to be much lower than what a reasonable forecast would have predicted. We then develop a model of an emerging-market economy where there is sovereign risk and moral hazard is a problem because agents expect the emerging market to bail out creditors with its reserves. We show that reserve uncertainty has a non-linear effect on the supply of credit. When the expected reserve position of an emerging market is large relative to the potential bailout in bad states of nature, reserve volatility does not matter. However, the same amount of reserve volatility can cause a large reduction in the supply of international credit if the emerging market's foreign debt is large enough or if the collapse of output forces the private sector to downgrade its priors about repayment possibilities. In addition, reserve volatility can reduce international credit if investors become more pessimistic about the emerging market's reserve position.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
7202.
Length: Date of creation: Jul 1999 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:7202
Note: IFM Contact details of provider: Postal: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. Phone: 617-868-3900 Email: Web page: http://www.nber.org More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: ().
Find related papers by JEL classification: F2 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business F3 - International Economics - - International Finance
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)