Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Financial Crises and Political Crises

Contents:

Author Info

  • Roberto Chang

    () (Rutgers University)

Abstract

Why are some financial crises associated with political crises and some are not? Does political instability cause financial fragility or the other way around? What are the implications of political distortions for policy in countries experiencing financial turmoil? This paper studies these and other questions in a formal model of debt, default, and financial crisis. A key assumption is that the default decision is made by a government that has superior information than the public about the social costs of default. Citizens, however, can dismiss the government, and overrule its default decision, at the cost of a political crisis. If there is a divergence between the objectives of the government and its people, political crisis may emerge in equilibrium. For this to be the case, the foreign debt must be large enough, and international reserves low. When this political equilibrium is seen as a part of a larger investment problem, I show that there are equilibria in which crises are "only financial," and equilibria in which default and political crises occur. In some cases, both kinds of equilibria coexist and, in this sense, a loss of confidence by foreign lenders can exacerbate the likelihood of a political crisis. If so, international intervention in financial markets may ensure financial and political stability at little cost. Policy analysis is delicate, however, and may require linking financial policies to political outcomes.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. 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.
File URL: ftp://snde.rutgers.edu/Rutgers/wp/2002-29.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Rutgers University, Department of Economics in its series Departmental Working Papers with number 200229.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: 17 Dec 2002
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:rut:rutres:200229

Contact details of provider:
Postal: New Jersey Hall - 75 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1248
Phone: (732) 932-7482
Fax: (732) 932-7416
Web page: http://snde.rutgers.edu/Rutgers/wp/rutgers-wplist.html
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: NA; Financial Crises; Political Crises; Political economy;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

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.:
as in new window
  1. Eaton, Jonathan & Fernandez, Raquel, 1995. "Sovereign debt," Handbook of International Economics, in: G. M. Grossman & K. Rogoff (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 3, pages 2031-2077 Elsevier.
  2. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini , Guido, 1997. "Political Economics and Macroeconomic Policy," Seminar Papers 630, Stockholm University, Institute for International Economic Studies.
  3. Chang, R. & Velasco, A., 1999. "Liquidity Crises in Emerging Markets: Theory and Policy," Working Papers 99-14, C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics, New York University.
  4. Torsten Persson & Guido Tabellini, 1999. "Political Economics and Public Finance," NBER Working Papers 7097, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  5. Acemoglu, Daron & Johnson, Simon & Robinson, James A & Thaicharoen, Yunyong, 2002. "Institutional Causes, Macroeconomic Symptoms: Volatility, Crises and Growth," CEPR Discussion Papers 3575, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  6. Roberto Chang, 1999. "Understanding recent crises in emerging markets," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, issue Q2, pages 6-16.
  7. Garber, P.M. & Svensson, L.E.O., 1994. "The Operation and Collapse of Fixed Exchange Rate Regimes," Papers 588, Stockholm - International Economic Studies.
  8. Frankel, Jeffrey, 2005. "Contractionary Currency Crashes In Developing Countries," Working Paper Series rwp05-017, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
  9. Mariano Tommasi, 1995. "Why Does it Take a Nixon to go to China?," UCLA Economics Working Papers 728, UCLA Department of Economics.
  10. Krugman, Paul, 1979. "A Model of Balance-of-Payments Crises," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 11(3), pages 311-25, August.
  11. Chang, Roberto & Majnoni, Giovanni, 2002. "Fundamentals, beliefs, and financial contagion," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(4-5), pages 801-808, May.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Hasman, Augusto & López, Ángel L. & SamartIín, Margarita, 2011. "Government, taxes and banking crises," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(10), pages 2761-2770, October.
  2. Mark A. Carlson & Galina B. Hale, 2005. "Courage to Capital? A Model of the Effects of Rating Agencies on Sovereign Debt Role-over," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1506, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
  3. Emanuel Kohlscheen, 2010. "Sovereign risk: constitutions rule," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 62(1), pages 62-85, January.
  4. Ionescu Cristian, 2012. "Financial Instability And Political Instability," Annals - Economy Series, Constantin Brancusi University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 4, pages 154-158, December.
  5. Martínez, Juan & Santiso, Javier, 2003. "Financial Markets and Politics: The Confidence Game in Latin American Emerging Economies," MPRA Paper 12909, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  6. Sandro C. Andrade & Emanuel Kohlscheen, 2010. "Pessimistic Foreign Investors and Turmoil in Emerging Markets: the case of Brazil in 2002," Working Papers Series 211, Central Bank of Brazil, Research Department.
  7. Carlo de Bassa Scheresberg, Francesco Passarelli, 2011. "Strategic Sovereign Defaults under International Sanctions," ISLA Working Papers 42, ISLA, Centre for research on Latin American Studies and Transition Economies, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
  8. Betty C. Daniel, 2012. "Private Sector Risk and Financial Crises in Emerging Markets," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 122(561), pages 825-847, 06.
  9. Moser, Christoph, 2007. "The Impact of Political Risk on Sovereign Bond Spreads - Evidence from Latin America," Proceedings of the German Development Economics Conference, Göttingen 2007 24, Verein für Socialpolitik, Research Committee Development Economics.
  10. Victor Vaugirard, 2005. "Crony Capitalism and Sovereign Default," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 77-99, January.
  11. Roberto Chang, 2006. "Electoral Uncertainty and the Volatility of International Capital Flows," NBER Working Papers 12448, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rut:rutres:200229

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ().

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.