This paper estimates a speculative attack model of currency crises in order to identify the role of economic fundamentals and any early warning signals of a potential currency crisis. The data from the Mexican economy was used to illustrate the model. Based on the results, a deterioration in fundamentals appears to have generated high one-step-ahead probabilities for the regime changes during the sample period 1982-1994. Particularly, increases in inflation differentials, appreciations of the real exchange rate, foreign reserve losses, expansionary monetary and fiscal policies, and increases in the share of short-term foreign currency debt appear to have contributed to the market pressures and regime changes in that period.

This paper develops a model of devaluation crises for an economy where foreign exchange restrictions lead to the emergence of a parallel market. The devaluation rule relates the size of the parity change to the spread between the official and parallel exchange rates. The mechanism that triggers the devaluation relates credit policy and the inflation tax. A credit expansion leads to an increase in the spread and possibly to a fall in inflation tax revenue, as agents switch away from domestic currency holdings. A devaluation reverses temporarily the process of erosion of the tax base if the associated fall in the premium raises the credibility of the new parity.

In the 1990s, currency crises in Europe, Mexico, and Asia have drawn worldwide attention to speculative attacks on government-controlled exchange rates and have prompted researchers to undertake new theoretical and empirical analysis of these events. This paper provides some perspective on this work and relates it to earlier research. It derives the optimal commitment to a fixed exchange rate and proposes a common framework for analyzing currency crises. This framework stresses the important role of speculators and recognizes that the government’s commitment to a fixed exchange rate is constrained by other policy goals. The final section finds that some crises may be particularly difficult to predict using currently popular methods.

The paper shows that changing market beliefs about currency risk can generate a self-fulfilling speculative attack on a fixed exchange rate. The attack does not require a later change in policies to make it profitable. This is illustrated by introducing an endogenous risk premium into a “first-generation model” of a speculative attack. The model is further modified to take account of sterilization, debt-financed fiscal deficits, and anticipatory price-setting behavior. The model is used to interpret the 1994 Mexican peso crisis.

This paper reviews recent developments in the theoretical and empirical analysis of balance-of-payments crises. A simple analytical model highlighting the process leading to such crises is first developed. The basic framework is then extended to deal with a variety of issues, such as: alternative post-collapse regimes, uncertainty, real sector effects, external borrowing and capital controls, imperfect asset substitutability, sticky prices, and endogenous policy switches. Empirical evidence on the collapse of exchange rate regimes is also examined, and the major implications of the analysis for macroeconomic policy discussed.