This paper reviews theoretical work on exchange-rate crises and discusses recent attempts to reduce the risk of crises and manage them more effectively. Models usually used to explain crises—those in which they are due to bad policies and those in which they are due to self-fulfilling speculative attacks—do not often explain the timing of crises. Bad policies often play a role, but the onset of a crisis is frequently due to a political shock that leads market participants to revise their views about a government's ability to improve its policies. For this reason, efforts of the IMF to promote the publication of more economic data may not be very helpful in preventing crises. Turning to crisis management, the paper criticizes plans like those of Jeffrey Sachs, which would give soveregn debtors protection resembling that afforded by bankruptcy law. It favors instead the pragmatic approach developed in the report recently endorsed by the major industrial countries. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1996
