The Third Generation Approach to Currency Crises

Abstract This chapter presents a highly stylized model, based on limited access to credit that can explain why an economy that is carrying a large amount of foreign currency debt might be vulnerable to currency crises, leaving it with a depreciated currency and GDP that remains lower than the pre-crisis trend for some time into the future. It is argued that in a monetary economy with standard price rigidities, credit constraints together with pecuniary externalities working through the nominal exchange rate are sufficient to generate currency crises.