Three and a half cycles of 'mania, panic, and [asymmetric] crash': East Asia and Latin America compared

This paper argues that, despite some significant differences, the 1982 debt crisis, the 1994 Mexican crisis, and the current 1997 East Asian crisis share the common characteristic that 'overlending' and 'overborrowing' are basically endogenous market failures of overliquid and underregulated financial markets--along the lines described by C. P. Kindleberger's Manias, Panics, and Crashes(1978) (although these crashes have tended to be 'asymmetric' as the largest international lenders have emerged relatively intact). The paper concludes with a discussion of Brazil's increasing vulnerability to a sudden collapse of confidence and withdrawal of finance, which indicates the probability of another impending crisis.