(None) Technical Summary of Thesis: The topic of my thesis is currency crisis. Currency crises have been a recurrent feature of the international economy from the invention of paper money. They are not confined to particular economies or specific region. They take place in developed, emerging, and developing countries and are spread all over the globe. Countries that experience currency crises face economic losses that can be huge and disruptive. However, the exacted toll is not only financial and economic, but also human, social, and political. It is clear that the currency crisis is a real threat to financial stability and economic prosperity. The main objective of this thesis is to analyze the determinants of currency crises for twenty OECD countries and South Africa from 1970 through 1998. It systematically examines the role of economic fundamentals and contagion in the origins of currency crises and empirically attempts to identify the channels through which the crises are being transmitted. It also examines the links between the incidence of currency crises and the choice of exchange rate regimes as well as the impact of capital market liberalization policies on the occurrence of currency crises. The first chapter identifies the episodes of currency crisis in our data set. Determining true crisis periods is a vital step in the empirical studies and has direct impact on the reliability of their estimations and the relevant policy implications. We define a period as a crisis episode when the Exchange Market Pressure (EMP) index, which consists of changes in exchange rates, reserves, and interest rates, exceeds a threshold. In order to minimize the concerns regarding the accuracy of identified crisis episodes, we apply extreme value theory, which is a more objective approach compared to other methods. In this chapter, we also select the reference country, which a country’s currency pressure index should be built around, in a more systematic way rather than by arbitrary choice or descriptive reasoning. The second chapter studies the probability of a currency exiting a tranquil state into a crisis state. There is an extensive literature on currency crises that empirically evaluate the roots and causes of the crises. Despite the interesting results of the current empirical literature, only very few of them account for the influence of time on the probability of crises. We use duration models that rigorously incorporate the time factor into the likelihood functions and allow us to investigate how the amount of time that a currency has already spent in the tranquil state affects the stability of a currency. Our findings show that high values of volatility of unemployment rates, inflation rates, contagion factors (which mostly work through trade channels), unemployment rates, real effective exchange rate, trade openness, and size of economy increases the hazard of a crisis. We make use of several robustness checks, including running our models on two different crisis episodes sets that are identified based on monthly and quarterly type spells. The third chapter examines the links between the incidence of currency crises and the choice of exchange rate regimes as well as the impact of capital market liberalization policies on the occurrence of currency crises. As in our previous paper, duration analysis is our methodology to study the probability of a currency crisis occurrence under different exchange rate regimes and capital mobility policies. The third chapter finds that there is a significant link between the choice of exchange rate regime and the incidence of currency crises in our sample. Nevertheless, the results are sensitive to the choice of the de facto exchange rate system. Moreover, in our sample, capital control policies appear to be helpful in preventing low duration currency crises. The results are robust to a wide variety of sample and models checks.

(None) Technical Summary of Thesis: The topic of my thesis is currency crisis. Currency crises have been a recurrent feature of the international economy from the invention of paper money. They are not confined to particular economies or specific region. They take place in developed, emerging, and developing countries and are spread all over the globe. Countries that experience currency crises face economic losses that can be huge and disruptive. However, the exacted toll is not only financial and economic, but also human, social, and political. It is clear that the currency crisis is a real threat to financial stability and economic prosperity. The main objective of this thesis is to analyze the determinants of currency crises for twenty OECD countries and South Africa from 1970 through 1998. It systematically examines the role of economic fundamentals and contagion in the origins of currency crises and empirically attempts to identify the channels through which the crises are being transmitted. It also examines the links between the incidence of currency crises and the choice of exchange rate regimes as well as the impact of capital market liberalization policies on the occurrence of currency crises. The first chapter identifies the episodes of currency crisis in our data set. Determining true crisis periods is a vital step in the empirical studies and has direct impact on the reliability of their estimations and the relevant policy implications. We define a period as a crisis episode when the Exchange Market Pressure (EMP) index, which consists of changes in exchange rates, reserves, and interest rates, exceeds a threshold. In order to minimize the concerns regarding the accuracy of identified crisis episodes, we apply extreme value theory, which is a more objective approach compared to other methods. In this chapter, we also select the reference country, which a country’s currency pressure index should be built around, in a more systematic way rather than by arbitrary choice or descriptive reasoning. The second chapter studies the probability of a currency exiting a tranquil state into a crisis state. There is an extensive literature on currency crises that empirically evaluate the roots and causes of the crises. Despite the interesting results of the current empirical literature, only very few of them account for the influence of time on the probability of crises. We use duration models that rigorously incorporate the time factor into the likelihood functions and allow us to investigate how the amount of time that a currency has already spent in the tranquil state affects the stability of a currency. Our findings show that high values of volatility of unemployment rates, inflation rates, contagion factors (which mostly work through trade channels), unemployment rates, real effective exchange rate, trade openness, and size of economy increases the hazard of a crisis. We make use of several robustness checks, including running our models on two different crisis episodes sets that are identified based on monthly and quarterly type spells. The third chapter examines the links between the incidence of currency crises and the choice of exchange rate regimes as well as the impact of capital market liberalization policies on the occurrence of currency crises. As in our previous paper, duration analysis is our methodology to study the probability of a currency crisis occurrence under different exchange rate regimes and capital mobility policies. The third chapter finds that there is a significant link between the choice of exchange rate regime and the incidence of currency crises in our sample. Nevertheless, the results are sensitive to the choice of the de facto exchange rate system. Moreover, in our sample, capital control policies appear to be helpful in preventing low duration currency crises. The results are robust to a wide variety of sample and models checks.

(None) Technical Summary of Thesis: The topic of my thesis is currency crisis. Currency crises have been a recurrent feature of the international economy from the invention of paper money. They are not confined to particular economies or specific region. They take place in developed, emerging, and developing countries and are spread all over the globe. Countries that experience currency crises face economic losses that can be huge and disruptive. However, the exacted toll is not only financial and economic, but also human, social, and political. It is clear that the currency crisis is a real threat to financial stability and economic prosperity. The main objective of this thesis is to analyze the determinants of currency crises for twenty OECD countries and South Africa from 1970 through 1998. It systematically examines the role of economic fundamentals and contagion in the origins of currency crises and empirically attempts to identify the channels through which the crises are being transmitted. It also examines the links between the incidence of currency crises and the choice of exchange rate regimes as well as the impact of capital market liberalization policies on the occurrence of currency crises. The first chapter identifies the episodes of currency crisis in our data set. Determining true crisis periods is a vital step in the empirical studies and has direct impact on the reliability of their estimations and the relevant policy implications. We define a period as a crisis episode when the Exchange Market Pressure (EMP) index, which consists of changes in exchange rates, reserves, and interest rates, exceeds a threshold. In order to minimize the concerns regarding the accuracy of identified crisis episodes, we apply extreme value theory, which is a more objective approach compared to other methods. In this chapter, we also select the reference country, which a country’s currency pressure index should be built around, in a more systematic way rather than by arbitrary choice or descriptive reasoning. The second chapter studies the probability of a currency exiting a tranquil state into a crisis state. There is an extensive literature on currency crises that empirically evaluate the roots and causes of the crises. Despite the interesting results of the current empirical literature, only very few of them account for the influence of time on the probability of crises. We use duration models that rigorously incorporate the time factor into the likelihood functions and allow us to investigate how the amount of time that a currency has already spent in the tranquil state affects the stability of a currency. Our findings show that high values of volatility of unemployment rates, inflation rates, contagion factors (which mostly work through trade channels), unemployment rates, real effective exchange rate, trade openness, and size of economy increases the hazard of a crisis. We make use of several robustness checks, including running our models on two different crisis episodes sets that are identified based on monthly and quarterly type spells. The third chapter examines the links between the incidence of currency crises and the choice of exchange rate regimes as well as the impact of capital market liberalization policies on the occurrence of currency crises. As in our previous paper, duration analysis is our methodology to study the probability of a currency crisis occurrence under different exchange rate regimes and capital mobility policies. The third chapter finds that there is a significant link between the choice of exchange rate regime and the incidence of currency crises in our sample. Nevertheless, the results are sensitive to the choice of the de facto exchange rate system. Moreover, in our sample, capital control policies appear to be helpful in preventing low duration currency crises. The results are robust to a wide variety of sample and models checks.

(None) Technical Summary of Thesis: The topic of my thesis is currency crisis. Currency crises have been a recurrent feature of the international economy from the invention of paper money. They are not confined to particular economies or specific region. They take place in developed, emerging, and developing countries and are spread all over the globe. Countries that experience currency crises face economic losses that can be huge and disruptive. However, the exacted toll is not only financial and economic, but also human, social, and political. It is clear that the currency crisis is a real threat to financial stability and economic prosperity. The main objective of this thesis is to analyze the determinants of currency crises for twenty OECD countries and South Africa from 1970 through 1998. It systematically examines the role of economic fundamentals and contagion in the origins of currency crises and empirically attempts to identify the channels through which the crises are being transmitted. It also examines the links between the incidence of currency crises and the choice of exchange rate regimes as well as the impact of capital market liberalization policies on the occurrence of currency crises. The first chapter identifies the episodes of currency crisis in our data set. Determining true crisis periods is a vital step in the empirical studies and has direct impact on the reliability of their estimations and the relevant policy implications. We define a period as a crisis episode when the Exchange Market Pressure (EMP) index, which consists of changes in exchange rates, reserves, and interest rates, exceeds a threshold. In order to minimize the concerns regarding the accuracy of identified crisis episodes, we apply extreme value theory, which is a more objective approach compared to other methods. In this chapter, we also select the reference country, which a country’s currency pressure index should be built around, in a more systematic way rather than by arbitrary choice or descriptive reasoning. The second chapter studies the probability of a currency exiting a tranquil state into a crisis state. There is an extensive literature on currency crises that empirically evaluate the roots and causes of the crises. Despite the interesting results of the current empirical literature, only very few of them account for the influence of time on the probability of crises. We use duration models that rigorously incorporate the time factor into the likelihood functions and allow us to investigate how the amount of time that a currency has already spent in the tranquil state affects the stability of a currency. Our findings show that high values of volatility of unemployment rates, inflation rates, contagion factors (which mostly work through trade channels), unemployment rates, real effective exchange rate, trade openness, and size of economy increases the hazard of a crisis. We make use of several robustness checks, including running our models on two different crisis episodes sets that are identified based on monthly and quarterly type spells. The third chapter examines the links between the incidence of currency crises and the choice of exchange rate regimes as well as the impact of capital market liberalization policies on the occurrence of currency crises. As in our previous paper, duration analysis is our methodology to study the probability of a currency crisis occurrence under different exchange rate regimes and capital mobility policies. The third chapter finds that there is a significant link between the choice of exchange rate regime and the incidence of currency crises in our sample. Nevertheless, the results are sensitive to the choice of the de facto exchange rate system. Moreover, in our sample, capital control policies appear to be helpful in preventing low duration currency crises. The results are robust to a wide variety of sample and models checks.

Depuis le milieu des années 1980, les pays en développement ainsi que d'autres pays membres du Fonds monétaire international (FMI) se sont engagés dans le processus de libéralisation du compte de capital dans le cadre de leurs programmes d'ajustement structurels et de l'intégration économique. Particulièrement, la libre circulation internationale des capitaux était perçue comme étant une solution pour collecter plus d'épargne, accroître les Investissements Direct Étrangers (IDE) et stimuler par la suite la croissance économique à long terme. Cette initiative a entraîné une forte hausse des flux d'investissement internationaux pendant les deux dernières décennies, la région MENA a, cependant, reçu seulement 6.5% du total des flux mondiaux des IDE. Cela soulève deux questions importantes à savoir : comment la libéralisation du compte de capital stimule les IDE? Et comment les IDE favorisent-ils la croissance économique ? Dés lors, dans cette thèse, nous examinons les déterminants des IDE dans la région MENA et leur impact sur la croissance économique tout en tenant compte du rôle de la libéralisation du compte de capital et la qualité institutionnelle. À cette fin, nous utilisons un modèle en panel dynamique estimé par la Méthode des Moments Généralisés (GMM) en système pour un échantillon de 17 pays de la région MENA sur la période entre 1985 et 2009.Les résultats montrent que la stabilité politique couplé à une politique de libéralisation du compte de capital stimule les IDE dans la région MENA. En particulier, l'impact positif de la libéralisation de compte de capital sur les flux d'IDE dans la région MENA est conditionné par le renforcement de la qualité des institutions et la réduction des risques politiques. Cependant, bien que les facteurs institutionnels s'avèrent être importants dans le choix d'implantation des investisseurs étrangers, la corruption et la bureaucratie ont augmenté les flux d'IDE dans les pays les plus ouverts financièrement de la région MENA.En ce qui concerne le rôle des IDE ainsi que leurs déterminants dans la promotion de la croissance économique, les résultats révèlent que les IDE, la qualité des institutions et la libéralisation du compte de capital sont des facteurs stimulateurs de croissance dans la région MENA. Néanmoins, leurs influences sont différents selon qu'il s'agit des pays membres du Conseil de Coopération du Golfe (CCG) ou non. Alors que, l'effet des IDE sur la croissance est positif dans les pays de GCC et négatif dans les pays non-membres de GCC, l'impact de la libéralisation du compte de capital et la qualité institutionnelle dans les pays non-membres de GCC sont positifs mais moins important que celui observé dans les pays de GCC. Les résultats révèlent également que, contrairement aux pays membres de GCC, la politique de libéralisation du compte de capital dans les pays non-membres de GCC ont réduit les avantages des IDE sur la croissance. Enfin, les résultats montent que les pays qui ont un cadre institutionnel sein bénéficient plus de l'effet de la libéralisation du compte de capital sur la croissance économique. / Ever since the mid-1980's, developing countries as well as other member countries of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have engaged in the process of capital account liberalization as part of their structural adjustment programs and economic integration agenda. The motive behind the removal of restrictions on capital account transactions was to attract capital flows mainly, the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), which is considered as an engine of economic growth. This initiative has led to a surge in international investment flows over the past two decades, the MENA region has, however, received only 6.5% of the global FDI inflows. This raises two important issues and policy challenge for the region, namely, how does capital account liberalization affect FDI inflows? And how does FDI promote economic growth? In this thesis, we examine the determinants of FDI in the MENA region and their impact on economic growth by focusing on the role of capital account liberalization and institutional quality. To this end, we conduct two empirical studies by using a GMM-System estimator developed for the dynamic model over the period between 1985 and 2009 for a sample of 17 MENA countries. Our findings reveal that while the level of capital account openness alone may discourage the inflows of FDI, if it is coupled with higher levels of institutional development or political stability, it can have a net positive impact on the volume of FDI inflows. MENA countries that are able to reap the benefits of the capital openness policy satisfy certain threshold conditions regarding the level of political stability and institutional quality. However, although institutional factors appear to be important in the location choice of FDI, corruption and bureaucracy have increased FDI inflows in the financially open countries in the region. Regarding the role of FDI and their determinants in boosting economic growth, we show that FDI, institutional quality and capital account liberalization constitute important growth stimulating factors in the MENA region. Nevertheless, their influences are different in GCC and Non-GCC countries. While, the effect of FDI on growth is positive in the GCC countries and negative in Non- GCC countries, the impact of capital account liberalization and institutional quality in the Non-GCC countries are positive but less than in the GCC countries. Results reveal also, that in contrast to the GCC countries, capital account liberalization policy in the Non-GCC countries have reduced the benefits of FDI on growth. This finding is explained by the fact that most of the Non-GCC countries have engaged in the process of financial reforms and have poor quality of institutions. Finally, we demonstrate that institutional conditions matter for capital account liberalization and growth relationship in the MENA region.Keywords: FDI, capital account liberalization, economic growth, institutions, MENA region, panel data.

本論文的研究含括了墨西哥金融危機、亞洲金融危機與俄羅斯金融危機，主要是希望能歸納出90年代新興市場國家發生金融危機的普遍性原因。首先本論文先探討分析文獻上三大類型的金融危機理論，含括金融危機可預測與不可預測的原因。本論文試圖將可預測的經濟基本面歸為內部因素，不可預測的國際資金變動歸為外部因素。當一新興市場國家正在從事經濟結構改革或經濟轉型，而資本市場架構與金融機構監督機制與規範都尚未健全時，如果該國將金融市場自由化並允許大筆外資流入國內金融體系，則短期、投機性國際資金將會扭曲金融結構，造成經濟基本面的惡化。當不可預測的國際資金環境轉變時，一方面受到資金逆流衝擊著脆弱的金融部門，另一方面已經不健全的經濟基本面將嚴重惡化。此時政府採取的提高利率政策與賣出外匯捍衛本國釘住匯率制，卻會同時嚴重傷及本國銀行體系，促使金融機構面臨倒閉、陷入流動性不足的危機，結果投資者的信心仍然潰散而國內則造成金融體系的崩潰，終而引發全面性的金融危機。在建立了初步的研究假設後，我們以墨西哥金融危機與亞洲金融危機作為驗證。我們的研究案例中將包括危機發生的國家與當時未發生危機的國家作為對照組。在墨西哥危機，我們以智利作為對照組。在亞洲五國危機（印尼、韓國、馬來西亞、菲律賓與泰國），我們以中國大陸、新加坡、台灣作為對照組。在確立了我們的理論模型後，我們以個案研究的方式深入瞭解俄羅斯特殊的轉型經濟體質。俄羅斯激烈的經濟結構改革措施，使國家從金融封閉整合入世界資本市場。俄羅斯面臨著外資大量流入金融市場，然而總體經濟面卻在財政與貨幣政策相互矛盾的狀況下，實質經濟依舊無法發展起來，而金融體質嚴重惡化的情況。俄羅斯的案例也同樣證明本論文的論點，一個新興市場國家資本帳的開放必須有其先決條件且循序漸進的開放。一國能否將國際資金導入對於實質產業有所助益的直接投資，是新興市場國家所面臨的重要課題。不然，資本自由化先決條件的不足而快速地實施自由化，將只是加速金融危機的到來。 / This research has included the financial crises of Mexico, Asia and Russia, mainly expecting to conclude the general causes for the financial crises of emerging market economies in the 1990s. First, the paper reviews the three types of theoretical literature on financial crises, including predictable and unpredictable causes. This thesis tries to refer to the predictable economic fundamental part as internal factors, and the unpredictable, international capital mobility as external factors. When an emerging market country is engaged in economic structural reform or economic transition, and when the capital-market architecture and the system of financial-sector supervision and regulation are not sound, if the country liberalize financial market and allow large-scale foreign capital to inflow into domestic financial system, then short-term, speculative international capital will deteriorate financial structure and the economic fundamentals will become worse. When the environment of unpredictable international capital changes, on the one hand, the withdrawal of foreign capital impacts the vulnerable financial sector, and on the other hand, the unhealthy economic fundamentals will become seriously worse. At the same time, the government takes measures to raise interest rates and to sell foreign currency to defend the pegged exchange rate, which will seriously weaken the banking system, causing the bankrupt and the crisis of illiquidity. As a result, the confidence of investors will crash down and the native financial institutions will collapse, and this gives rise to the financial crisis in large scale. After the presumption of this research, we take Mexican and Asian financial crises for example. We try to give corresponding cases for contrast. In Mexican crisis, we take Chile as a contradistinctive group. In five Asian country crises (Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Philip, and Thailand), we take China, Singapore, and Taiwan as a contradistinctive group. After proving our model, we try to take Russia as a case study because of the special nature of economic transformation of Russia. The policy of drastic structural economic reform has made Russia step from the financial isolation to the integration into World’s capital market. Russia faces the large-scale foreign capital inflow in the financial market, while the real economy can not recover and domestic financial institutions become structurally weak because of the contradiction of the fiscal and monetary policy. The case of Russia also shows us the argument of this thesis--capital-account liberalization of an emerging market must depend on its prerequisites and steadiness of liberalization. When a nation can make proper use of the capital, conducting foreign investment to real economy is the important challenge of an emerging market. Otherwise, the capital-account liberalization will speed up the coming of financial crisis.