All Resources: The Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-99

Stephan Haggard

 

A Brief Bibliography on the Political Economy of the Asian Financial Crisis

The best single source for documents relating to the economics of the crisis — including both academic writing, policy papers, and opinion — is the website maintained by Nouriel Roubini at New York University: http://www.stern.nyu.edu/globalmacro/, click on Asian Crisis. Country information from the IMF is available at http://www.imf.org/. The World Bank maintains an East Asia page that has very useful information on the countries in the region, http://wbln0018.worldbank.org/eap/eap.nsf/.

The literature on the political economy of the crisis is somewhat less well-developed. With respect to theory, Jeff Frieden's "The Politics of Exchange Rates," in Sebatian Edwards and Moises Naim, eds., Mexico 1994: Anatomy of an Emerging Market Crash (Washington D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1997) provides an excellent interest-group account of exchange rate regimes, an integral part of the crisis. K.S. Jomo's Tigers in Trouble: Financial Governance, Liberalization, and Crisis (London: Zed Books, 1998), presents an early account focused primarily on the risks of financial liberalization. Stephan Haggard's The Political Economy of the Asian Financial Crisis (Washington D.C.: The Institute for International Economics, 2000) emphasizes the role of business-government relations as a key determinant of both the onset of the crisis and how it was managed; he also addresses the social dimensions of the crisis. Andrew MacIntyre, in "Institutions and Investors: The Politics of the Financial Crisis in Southeast Asia," International Organization (forthcoming 2001), examines the effects of institutions on policy, and influenced the account provided here.

Country studies and other analytic essays are contained in several useful edited volumes. A very good collection of essays by economists is Ross McLeod and Ross Garnaut, eds., East Asia in Crisis: From Being a Miracle to Needing One? (London: Routledge, 1998). T.J. Pempel, ed., The Politics of the Asian Financial Crisis (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999) reflects the views of prominent North American political scientists; Richard Robison, Mark Beeson, Kanishka Jayasuriya and Hyuk-Rae Kim, eds., Politics and Markets in the Wake of the Asian Crisis (London: Routledge, 2000) contains essays by prominent Australian and Asian scholars, with a focus on the long-run consequences of the crisis for "Asian capitalism."

The international political dimensions of the crisis have still not been thoroughly studied. Robert Zoellick and Philip Zelikow's America and the East Asian Crisis: Memos to a President (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000) contains a number of brief essays on the geopolitics of the crisis. Stephen J. Blank paints a bleak picture of the effects of the crisis in "East Asia in Crisis: the Security Implications of the Collapse of Economic Institutions at http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usassi/ssipubs/pubs99/eastasia/eastasia.htm.

Much of the debate on the international political dimensions of the crisis has focused on the merits of the IMF's intervention. The IMF defends its policy stance in Timothy Lane, et. al., IMF-Supported Programs in Indonesia, Korea and Thailand: A Preliminary Assessment (Washington D.C.: International Monetary Fund Occasional Paper no. 178, 1999). A more skeptical view is contained in Morris Goldstein, "IMF Structural Programs" (at http://www.stern.nyu.edu/globalmacro/, under "Interesting Readings").

Gregory Noble and John Ravenhill, eds., The Asian Financial Crisis and the Architecture of Global Finance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) mixes country studies with essays on the international institutions; see in particular Miles Kahler's "The New International Financial Architecture and its Limits." Barry Eichengreen, Toward a New International Financial Architecture (Washington: The Institute for International Economics, 1999), provides the best overview of the issues. John Williamson deftly sums up the post-crisis reports on the international financial architecture in "The Role of the IMF: A Guide to the Reports," Institute for International Economics Policy Brief 00-5 at http://www.iie.com/policybriefs/news00-5.htm.

Online Resources

CRS Report: The 1997-98 Asian Financial Crisis
Chronology of the Asian Financial Crisis

Asian Financial Crisis — The World Bank

Asian Financial Crisis — Monitoring the social effects: Social impact of the Asian financial crisis in Thailand
Thailand Social Monitor, World Bank Office, Thailand 1999...

Financial Crises in Emerging Markets
Capital Movements, Banking Insolvency, and Silent Runs in the Asian Financial Crisis...

The Asian Financial Crisis and the Opportunities of Globalization
Address by Michel Camdessus, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund...

The Social Impacts of Asian Financial Crisis — from the UNDP