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Investigación económica
Print version ISSN 0185-1667
Inv. Econ vol.63 n.248 Ciudad de México Apr./Jun. 2004
Artículos
Reflections on Currency Crises
Reflexiones sobre las crisis monetarias
*Department of Economics, University of Utah, United States <korkut@mill.econ.utah.edu>.
Currency crises, which have increasingly become a common occurrence around the world in the 1990s, can be analyzed at three different levels. Looking at it at the national level, these crises can be seen to signify the pitfalls of betting on financial liberalization to attract foreign capital on a massive scale, where financial imbalances caused by excessive debt, in this or that form, lead to an implosion. Looked at the level of the international monetary system, many of these crises are caused by a new breed of speculative attacks that have beleaguered global financial markets in recent times where expectations tend to become self-fulfilling prophecies. Finally, these crises can also be looked at the level of the structure of international trade and the world economy, where many developing countries today face, arguably, the threat of ‘immiserizing growth’ reflecting the fallacy of composition problem inherent in a generalized strategy of export-led growth.
Las crisis monetarias, las cuales llegan a ser cada vez más un acontecimiento común alrededor del mundo en los años noventa, pueden ser analizadas en tres diferentes niveles. Observando hacia un nivel nacional, estas crisis pueden significar el escollo del juego de la liberalización financiera para atraer capital externo en una escala masiva, donde los desequilibrios financieros causados por deudas excesivas, en esta u otra forma, son producto de una implosión. Observando desde el nivel del sistema monetario internacional, muchas de estas crisis son causadas por una nueva clase de atracción especulativa que recientemente hemos sitiado en los mercados financieros globales donde las expectativas tienden a llegar a ser profecías cumplidas en sí mismas. Finalmente, estas crisis pueden ser vistas, además, desde un nivel de la estructura del comercio internacional y la economía mundial, donde la apariencia actual de muchos países en desarrollo sostiene que la amenaza de un ‘crecimiento próspero’ refleja el error de composición del problema inherente a una estrategia generalizada de crecimiento guiado por exportaciones.
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Received: June 2003; Accepted: August 2003
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