Institutions, expectations, and currency crises

Currency crises are costly phenomena that have been exceptionally difficult to explain and predict. We comprehensively examine the relationship between political institutions and currency crises and emphasize the causal linkage between institutions, expectations, and crises. Specifically, we argue that institutional variables-particularly divided government and government turnover-increase the variance of expectations held by speculators thereby increasing the likelihood of currency crises. We test these hypotheses using three existing economic models of currency crises and find that institutional variables are not only statistically significant, but also substantially improve the ability of these models to forecast crises.