Some Parallels Between Currency and Banking Crises

There is a sizeable literature on the causes of speculative attacks on fixed exchange rates and a large literature on the determinants of bank runs. Surprisingly, these two literatures rarely overlap, even though both types of crises involve attacks on asset price-fixing schemes. This paper draws a number of parallels between the work on currency crises and the work on banking crises and examines some of the new insights that are coming out of a more integrated approach in the aftermath of the Asian financial crises.