Managing Currency Crisis in Emerging Markets

How to manage financial crises in emerging markets is a high stakes and contentious challenge for public policy. In this work, leading economists consider how best to reduce the frequency and cost of such crises.

---

How to manage financial crises in emerging markets is a high-stakes and contentious challenge for public policy today. In this book, leading economists -many of whom have also participated in policy debates on these issues - consider how best to reduce the frequency and costs of such crises. The first three chapters focus on the immediate defence of a currency under attack, exploring whether unnecessary damage to economies can be avoided by adopting the right response in the first few days of a financial crisis. Next, contributors examine the adjustment programs that follow crises, considering how to design these programs so that they shorten the recovery phase, encourage economic growth, and minimize the probability of future difficulties. Finally, the last four papers analyze the actual effects of adjustment programs, asking whether they accomplish what they are designed to do and whether they impose disproportionate costs on the poorest members of society. Economists and policymakers should welcome this volume, as they have its companion, Sebastian Edwards and Jeffrey A. Frankel's "Preventing Currency Crises in Emerging Markets".