Spillovers through banking centers: a panel data analysis of bank flows

This paper presents evidence that spillovers through bank lending contributed to the transmission of currency crises during the recent episodes of financial instability in emerging markets. The innovation of the paper is that it looks beyond aggregated measures of contagion into the structure of bank flows, disaggregating by banking centers. The main findings are that spillovers caused by banks' exposures to a crisis country help predict flows in third countries after the Mexican and Asian crises, but not after the Russian crisis. In the latter, there is evidence of a generalized outflow from emerging markets. The importance of spillovers through banking centers suggests that countries might reduce contagion risk by diversifying the sources of their financing and by carefully monitoring borrowing from creditors exposed to potential crisis countries. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.