1 Currency Crisis Models

There have been many currency crises during the postwar era (see Kaminsky and Reinhart, 1999). A currency crisis is an episode in which the exchange rate depreciates substantially during a short period of time. There is an extensive literature on the causes and consequences of a currency crisis in a country with a fixed or heavily managed exchange rate. The models in this literature are often categorized as first-, second-or third-generation. In first-generation models the collapse of a fixed exchange rate regime is caused by unsustainable fiscal policy. The classic first-generation models are those of Krugman (1979) and Flood and Garber (1984). These models are related to earlier work by Henderson and Salant (1978) on speculative attacks in the gold market. Important extensions of these early models incorporate consumer optimization and the government's intertemporal budget constraint into the analysis provide a detailed review of first-generation models. In a fixed exchange rate regime a government must fix the money supply in accordance with the fixed exchange rate. This requirement severely limits the government's ability to raise seigniorage revenue. A hallmark of first-generation models is that the government runs a persistent primary deficit. This deficit implies that the government must either deplete assets, such as foreign reserves, or borrow to finance the deficit. It is infeasible for the government to borrow or deplete reserves indefinitely. Therefore, in the absence of fiscal reforms, the government must eventually finance the deficit by printing money to raise seigniorage revenue. Since printing money is inconsistent with keeping the exchange rate fixed, first-generation models predict that the regime must collapse. The precise timing of its collapse depends on the details of the model.