The Asian Financial Crisis

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Critically assess the contending explanations of the Asian financial crisis. By using appropriate examples of policy change or company case studies, evaluate how two different countries responded to the crisis to restore confidence and sustained growth. South East Asian countries have until the late 90’s enjoyed significant increases in living standards and high levels of economic growth. However countries like Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea had large current account deficits and their inability to maintain a pegged exchange rate led to external borrowing and led to excessive exposure to foreign exchange risk in not only the financial and corporate sectors. This saw investors’ confidence in those regions fall dramatically. This crisis led to poor economic conditions and some even enlisting the help of the IMF (International Monetary Fund). Some views claim the crisis was in response to a slowdown in world trade, however there are two main views as to why the South East Asian crisis occurred. With the first view it is believed that sudden deterioration in confidence and market expectations led to financial chaos. The economic performance of some countries had worsened in the mid 90’s, however this view stresses that the financial crisis should not be attributed to this worsening but rather to the panicking of domestic and international investors. The other view states that the crisis was brought about by structural and policy distortions in the region. Despite these two main views it can be said that the reason for the crisis was a combination of factors, which reinforced each other. This essay then goes on to use two countries Malaysia and South Korea to show how they responded to the crisis in order to restore confidence and growth. The financial crisis is said by some to have started in 1997 in Thailand. This was due to a fall in Thai exports.

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