Ten Crises

by Peter Montiel

Financial crises are dramatic events. When they emerge, they tend to dominate the attention of the press and become the focus of policymakers. In one form or another, they have affected the lives of millions of people throughout the world. As references to 16th century Dutch tulips, 18th South Seas merchant ventures, or 1920s Florida real estate make clear, they have been around for a long time. At their worst, such as in the cases of the Great Depression or the current Great Recession, their effects have been felt worldwide, with the number of people affected counted into the billions. They have at times changed the course of history. This book analyses ten of the most important financial crises of the last thirty years. The specific crises covered in the book are the 1982 Chilean crisis, the 1992 ERM crisis, the 1994 Mexican crisis, the 1997 Asian crisis, the 1998 Russian crisis, the 1999 Brazilian crisis, the 1999 Ecuadorian crisis, the 2000 Turkish crisis, the 2002 Argentine crisis, and the 2008 crisis in Iceland. The set includes the most important emerging-market crises of the last three decades as well as two particularly informative advanced-country crises, the ERM crisis of 1992 and the Icelandic crisis of 2008. A separate chapter is devoted to each crisis, and a brief concluding chapter sums up some of the key lessons that I believe that we can draw from these events.

Genres: Economics

306 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Montiel investigates currency crises, banking sector crises, & sovereign debt crises through ten case studies stretching from the twin currency & banking sector crises in Chile in 1982 to the 2007-2008 Icelandic financial crisis. The case studies clearly and concisely lay out the economic & political contexts, policy choices, shocks, responses, and lessons from each episode, ultimately shedding significant light on the drivers, vulnerabilities, and mechanisms which connect these types of crises. The book is an excellent introduction to the study of financial crises and a worthy text to strengthen one's analytical toolkit for assessing risk in global markets.

[Richard Marney · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book for an undergraduate or professional introduction to financial crises. The author starts with a succinct summary of the types of financial crises (currency, sovereign debt, and banking), before launching into a series of ten case studies (hence the the title), beginning with Chile (1982) and ending with Iceland (2008). The case studies all employ a clever discussion structure consisting of background, emergence of vulnerabilities, shock, policy response, aftermath and lessons learned, which lends itself to an easy comparison of cases. Indeed, I've borrowed the approach for the analysis of other financial crisis episodes.

A re-read. As my co-author, Philipp Waeber, and I work our way through the research and writing of our book - The Emerging Markets Investor’s Guide to Country Risk: Systematic Risks and Their Threat to Investment Performance - due to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in the Spring of 2026, I am going back to a number of valuable texts that formed the core of academic / professional readings in those topic area. This book shines as brightly as it did when I read it the first time in 2014.