A striking and unexpected feature of the financial crisis has been the sharpappreciation of the US dollar against virtually all currencies globally. The paper findsthat negative US-specific macroeconomic shocks during the crisis have triggered asignificant strengthening of the US dollar, rather...

The global economy has witnessed significant transformations in recent decades, marked by the emergence of new economic powers and the evolution of financial systems. Within this context, the globalization of currencies has become a crucial aspect of international economic dynamics. This paper...

The study analyses comovement between the real effective exchange rate of South Africa and those of a sample of countries that include the world’s major economies as well as emerging and developing economies. The comovement is examined over the short and long term as well as pre and post the...

The study analyses comovement between the real effective exchange rate of South Africa and those of a sample of countries that include the world’s major economies as well as emerging and developing economies. The comovement is examined over the short and long term as well as pre and post the...

Investors, policymakers, and Economists have debated whether high volatility in the parallel exchange rate in Zimbabwe was driven by stock exchange fungibility or not. This study investigated the interaction between the stock exchange fungibility market and the parallel exchange rate market. The...

This note reviews the theories as to why financial crises spill over across national boundaries. We discuss alternative frameworks ranging from bilateral trade links to more complex financial interconnections via banks and other investors. We review the evidence on which channels of contagion...

The preceding sections have predominantly focused on the antecedents of financial crises. Namely, the emphasis has been on the ability of a variety of indicators, including the credit ratings, to anticipate crises and characterize the extent to which a country is vulnerable. An application of...

In this chapter we provide a brief review of the “signals” approach used in this book to assess the probability of a currency or a banking crisis. This methodology was first used to analyze the performance of a variety of macroeconomic and financial indicators around the “twin crises” in...

The signals approach was applied to 24 of the indicators around the dates of the 29 banking and the 87 currency crises. In what follows, we first compare our results for the 15 original indicators in Kaminsky and Reinhart (1996) to those presented in that study. This exercise assesses the...

In this study, we begin by assessing the ability of sovereign credit ratings to anticipate crises. In addition, given the wave of sovereign credit ratings downgrades that have followed the crises in Asia, we investigate formally the extent to which credit ratings are reactive. Along the way, we...