The current international financial crisis: how much is new?

This paper surveys a broad array of data to compare the scope and impact of three emerging market financial crises: the debt crisis of the 1980s, the Mexican financial crisis of 1994-95, and the current international financial crisis. While certain conventional views regarding the three episodes are supported by the data examined in this paper, we find that in several respects, the current crisis is more similar to prior emerging market crisis episodes than is commonly believed. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. JEL classification: F32; F41.