This dissertation is a collection of three essays dealing with selected problems of the Euro Area during its most recent crisis. It applies empirical, theoretical, and institutional analyses to gain new insights into many of its financial aspects. The first essay offers an alternative explanation for the surge in government bond spreads. Many researchers attribute this phenomenon to market sentiment and multiple equilibria alone. We show that an often neglected fundamental variable may drive spreads: a decrease in the expected recovery value of private market participants. With an ever-increasing share of crisis countries’ debt held by official creditors, private investors may feel pushed into the position of subordinated creditors. The other two essays both explain the sharp increase in central bank credit from different perspectives. First, from the national perspective, central banks may be confronted with a classical tragedy-of-the-commons problem, which gives rise to an expansionary bias. Second, from the perspective of the ECB, we argue that the empirical patterns surrounding the liquidity provision in December 2011 are reminiscent of a speculative attack on a fixed exchange rate system.

在了解一特定國家金融危機的成因時，除了目前已有的三代金融危機理論之外，我們覺得尚應有一個國家別論述架構才能更完整的解釋特定金融危機的前因後果。 參與韓國自1970年代以來大力推動的以出口帶動經濟成長策略的「韓國政府」、「韓國大企業財團」，以及基本上是為此等財團服務的「韓國金融機構」三者間所共同形成的運作邏輯及其利益交換的三角關係，乃是韓國特有的國家別論述架構。 此一韓國獨有的特殊三角運作，僅管一直存在政府擴張性政策所造成信用過度擴張、金融機構受制於政府及貸款企業體質而致的經營沒有效率與道德危機，以及因此累積的對外舉債過多等諸多風險因子，但由於國際貿易與國際資本市場一直對韓國有利，1990年代中期前此一三角運作堪稱良好。 然而自1990年代中期起，韓國受外在因素接連影響，一路從國際貿易市場優勢不再、企業財團獲利急速惡化，進而拖累本國金融機構體質等基本面因素上為金融危機奠下惡因，最後在1997年東南亞國家連串發生金融危機的那個時間點上，沒能撐過國際資金短期內自韓國全面撤離的衝擊，終於發生金融危機。 1997年韓國金融危機儘管是個危機，但它也帶給韓國一個來自IMF援救計畫的外來改革動力，成功的克服過去「政府、企業財團及金融機構」三角運作中所累積的沉疴以及抗拒改革的慣性，讓進一步提升韓國經濟發展的結構性改造得以全面推動。 / Three generations of financial crises theories have been evolved since Paul Krugman developed his speculative attack models in 1979. Krugman emphasized the failure of the fundamentals while the later theories including the exit clause models addressing the conditional commitment of the central banks, the moral hazards of the financial institutes and the self-fulfilling effect of the markets. We looked into the 1997 Korean financial crisis with these prevailing theoretical principles and also developed a framework incorporating three closely related Korean parties, namely the government, the chaebols（conglomerates）and the financial institutes to unveil this specific Korean case.