Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/60585 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2006
Series/Report no.: 
Staff Report No. 249
Publisher: 
Federal Reserve Bank of New York, New York, NY
Abstract: 
Self-fulfilling expectations are commonly believed to play an important role in the transmission of currency crises across countries. However, existing models that use multiple equilibria to illustrate the importance of such expectations have many undesirable features. This paper presents a new mechanism, based on the incomplete information framework of Morris and Shin (AER, 1998), through which self-fulfilling expectations can generate contagion. If speculators expect contagion across markets to occur, they have an incentive to trade in both currencies to take advantage of this correlation. These actions, in turn, link the two markets in such a way that a sharp devaluation of one currency will be propagated to the other market and will fulfill the original expectations. Even though the resulting model has multiple equilibria, it places restrictions on observable variables that are broadly consistent with existing empirical evidence.
Subjects: 
currency crises, contagion, speculative attacks, self-fulfilling prophesies
JEL: 
F31
G15
D82
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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