Experiences with Financial Liberalization provides a broad spectrum of policy experiences relating to financial liberalization around the globe since the 1960s. There is a sizable body of theoretical and aggregative empirical literature in this area, but there is little work documenting and analyzing the experiences of individual countries and/or sets of countries. This book is divided into four parts by geographical region - Africa, Asia and Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. Aggregative econometric studies cannot substitute for country-wide studies in allowing the researcher to draw lessons for the future, and this volume adds to this relatively small body of literature.

The Nordic financial crisis had it all: a botched liberalization, a huge boom followed by an even bigger bust, massive taxpayer-financed bailouts and, finally, deep long-run gains. The first-class team of scholars mobilized in this book convincingly tell a story that should be carefully studied by economists, bankers and policymakers. After this book, no one should be able to say: If we only knew ! Charles Wyplosz, Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, Switzerland The financial crisis in Scandinavia in the early 1990s was a forerunner of the later world-wide crisis in 2007/8. Although the initial causation was different, the impact on their banks, though more localised, was just as severe. So we can benefit, and already policymakers have done so, from learning the lessons in this book on how to restore shattered banking systems to health. For this we owe a debt of gratitude to the editors, who have put together a series of key papers that emerged from a much larger exercise on the crisis that was earlier reported in four volumes in Swedish and Finnish. Amongst the many studies on current and past financial crises, this is a classic must-read . Charles A.E. Goodhart, London School of Economics, UK The Nordic experience with financial crisis resolution could not be more timely. Everyone cites it as an example of how it should be done , but rarely does one find careful and detailed analysis. Now policymakers and others searching for guidance will know where to look. Barry Eichengreen, University of California, Berkeley, US Following World War II, Nordic countries were commonly regarded as successful and stable economies. This perception was, however, shattered in the early 1990s when Finland and Sweden encountered severe financial crises. Here, the authors explore the symptoms of financial crisis decreasing real income, soaring unemployment and exploding public deficits and their devastating effects. The book compares and contrasts the experiences of Finland and Sweden, then adopts an international perspective, encompassing the experiences of Asia, Latin America, Denmark and Norway. Lessons from the 1990s crisis are drawn, and possible solutions prescribed. The conclusion is that long-term effects of financial crises financial liberalization and integration are not as dramatic as the short-term effects, but may prove to be of greater importance over time. Only the future will show whether these long-term benefits will balance or even outweigh the enormous short-term costs of the crises. Highly relevant to the current international financial crisis currently afflicting the world economy, this timely book will prove invaluable to economists and other social scientists with a general interest in financial crises, and to those with a more specific interest in the evolution and models of Scandinavian economies.

The financial liberalization thesis emerged in the 1970s and has been of considerable importance ever since, not merely in terms of its theoretical influence but, perhaps more importantly, in terms of its impact on policy makers and policy debates. Although it has encountered increasing scepticism over the years, it nevertheless had a relatively early impact on development policy, which still continues unabated, through the work of the IMF and the World Bank. The latter two institutions, perhaps in their traditional role as promoters of what were claimed to be free market conditions, were keen to encourage financial liberalization policies as part of more general reforms or stabilization programmes. This book explores what we have learned from the vast experience of the theoretical and policy aspects of the financial liberalization.

This volume provides a rounded view of financial liberalization after the collapses in East Asia.

After the industrial countries established current account convertibility in the late1950s, they began to phase out their capital controls. Their efforts were slow and tentative at first, but built up considerable momentum by the 1980s as market-oriented economic policies gained popularity. This paper describes how national policymakers’ views of capital controls shifted over time, and how these controls have been closely related to regulation in other policy areas, such as banking and financial markets. As developing countries seek to liberalize their capital accounts to obtain the benefits of increased integration with the global economy, what lessons can be drawn from industrial countries’ diverse experiences with capital controls, and how can a country’s liberalization measures be sequenced to minimize disturbances to its exchange rate and monetary policies?

This study is the first to look at the analytics of and experience with financial reform, in examples drawn mostly from the developing world.