东南亚金融危机:使用明斯基方式消除错觉
11-11, 2015
东南亚金融危机:使用明斯基方式消除错觉
1.引言
海曼明斯基的金融不稳定假说似乎非常适用于亚洲金融危机。不足为奇,尽管许多评论家可能一直受他思想的影响，但很少有人明确试图以此为基础来分析这场危机。例如，1998年11月，整个《剑桥经济学杂志》上都在分析亚洲危机、但它只有一篇文章直接提及明斯基。为了填补分析残缺, 本文对明斯基的研究表明它确实提供了一个亚洲金融危机令人信服的解释和一个有重要意义的政策。
一个因素可能导致忽视如此丰富的潜在来源的理解是,显然与开放亚洲金融危机的本质不同, 明斯基的模型设定在一个封闭的经济框架。另一个原因是,他的研究早于当前金融自由化的时代。在本文的下一节,我们认为他的“金融不稳定假说“实际上可以很容易扩展到开放的经济,“自由化”案例。在这种理论基础上,本文的第三部分旨在具体提出明斯基在东南亚金融危机的适用性。而第四部分将 解释Minskyan拒绝对立的账户，而是发展重大政策影响的讨论,最后,提供了一些结论。
1 INTRODUCTION 引言
Hyman Minsky’s ‘Financial Instability Hypothesis’ would seem to have obvious application to the recent experience of financial crisis in Asia. It is therefore a matter of surprise that, while many commentators may have been influenced by his ideas, so few have attempted to use them explicitly as a basis analysing the crisis. The whole of the November 1998 issue of the Cambridge Journal of Economics, for example, was devoted to the crisis in Asia. Yet it contained just one direct reference to Minsky (1986). In an attempt to fill the analytical gap, this paper seeks to build on Minsky’s work to show that it does indeed offer the basis for a convincing interpretation of the crisis in Asia and one which has important implications for policy.
One factor which may have contributed to the neglect of so rich a potential source of understanding is that, in contrast to the patently open nature of the Asian crisis, Minsky’s model is developed within a closed economy framework. Another is that his work predates the current era of financial ‘liberalisation’. In the next section of this paper, we argue that his ‘Financial Instability Hypothesis can in fact be extended readily to the open-economy, ‘liberalised’, case. On this theoretical basis, the paper’s third section proceeds to put forward a specifically Minskyan account of the road to financial crisis in South East Asia, whilst the fourth section considers and rejects a number of rival explanations in favour of this Minskyan account. Major policy implications of the discussion are then developed, before, finally, some conclusions are offered.
Minsky's vision was that ‘the normal functioning of our economy leads to financial trauma and crises ... (I)n short, ... financially complex capitalism is inherently flawed’ (Minsky 1986, p.287, italics in original). In contrast, the conventional wisdom of today is that markets ‘work’. On this latter view, the proposition that the source of financial crisis must be exogenous to the financial system and located either in government failure or ‘shocks’ (or both) is taken as more or less axiomatic truth. Equally, the fact that financial crisis and the spread of financial ‘liberalisation’ have coincided in Asia can only be regarded as a matter of chance.#p#分页标题#e#
The contention of this paper is that such judgements are based on a failure to understand (or a refusal to recognise) the endemic instability of financial markets. We are sure our extension of Hyman Minsky's ideas (essentially 1957, 1975, 1982, 1986) to dispel these illusions of the age would have been warmly applauded by the man himself, had he been alive today.
2明斯基在一个封闭的、开放和自由化的经济MINSKY IN A CLOSED, AN OPEN AND A ‘LIBERALISED’ ECONOMY
In this part of the paper, we set out and attempt to justify our extension of Minsky’s theory to the open economy (Section 2.2) and the financially ‘liberalised’ economy (Section 2.3). First, however, in Section 2.1, we point to various features of his closed-economy analysis that are of relevance to our extension of it and elaborate on them to the brief extent necessary to support our later argument.
2.1明斯基的封闭型经济下分析Minsky’s closed-economy analysis
The essence of Minsky’s originality is to be found in the central motif of his work, the thesis that forces capable of producing financial fragility are built into the system itself. The following passage succinctly expresses his view:
(I)n a world of uncertainty, given capital assets with a long gestation period, ... the successful functioning of an economy within an initially robust financial structure will lead to a structure that becomes more fragile as time elapses. Endogenous forces UEL, Department of Economics, Working Paper No.22, December 1999 4 make a situation dominated by hedge finance unstable ... (Minsky 1986, p.213)
Certain elements of the analysis Minsky developed to support this thesis are key for the purposes of the present discussion. These are identified under the series of sub-headings that follow.
(i) The drive towards financial innovation For Minsky, the ‘drive to innovate financing practices by profit-seeking households, businesses, and bankers’ (ibid, p.197) is at the root of the financial instability inherent in capitalism. For, as he argues: ‘Profits are available to innovators in financial structures and institutions as well as to innovators in products, production techniques, and marketing’ (p.298) and ‘(a)s capitalism abhors unexploited profit opportunities, market instruments and usages develop to exploit interest rate gaps’ (p.213).
In all this, financial intermediaries play a central role. ‘Because bankers live in the same expectational climate as businessmen’4 , Minsky writes, ‘profit-seeking bankers will find ways of accommodating their customers’ (p.228). Specifically, ‘(t)hey actively solicit borrowing customers, undertake financing commitments, ... build connections with business and other bankers, and seek out funds’ (pp.229-230). It is noteworthy here that Minsky does not simply cite bankers’ innovating activities as lenders but stresses the fact that their compulsion to innovate extends to their own borrowing activities too.#p#分页标题#e#
(ii) 对冲,投机和庞氏融资Hedge, speculative and Ponzi finance
It is not necessary to elaborate in a general way on this celebrated conceptual trinity in this paper5 . However, critical to the discussion below is the fact that Minsky characterises the speculativefinancing unit in two closely related but not entirely overlapping ways. On the one hand, he offers a definition in terms of such a unit’s own cash flow prospects. Thus he writes that ‘the balance sheet cash flows from a unit can be larger than the expected income receipts so that the only way they canbe met is by rolling over ... debt; units that roll over debt are engaged in speculative finance’ (1986, p.203). At the same time he also refers to the speculative-financing unit in terms of the impact on it of changes in financial market conditions. For example, he states: ‘speculative ..... finance units are vulnerable to .. financial-market developments .. as well as to product and factor market events: increases in interest rates will raise cash-flow commitments without increasing prospective receipts. Furthermore, as they must continuously refinance their positions, they are vulnerable to financial market disruptions’ (ibid., p.209).
For Minsky, the ‘prototypical speculative financial organization’ (ibid., p.207) is the commercial bank. In the case of banks, his two characterisations are clearly coincident: they have continually to engage in refinancing of their liability structures and they are vulnerable to adverse developments in financial markets. However, even in the closed economy, other cases are not so clear-cut. Consider a firm that has issued variable-rate, long-dated debt on terms that it expects to be able to meet comfortably at the time of issue. At that point in time the firm is, on the first of Minsky’s criteria, a hedge-financing unit6 . For it does not foresee having to roll its debt over. On the other hand, it is, from the moment the debt is issued, in a speculative financing position in the sense that it is vulnerable to adverse changes in financial market conditions. We draw attention to this ambiguity here since it takes on some significance when Minsky’s theory is extended to the open economy .
The speculative financing state is also critical in that it exposes the unit to the risk of ‘being forced into Ponzi-financing arrangements8 by income shortfalls or interest cost escalations’, this involuntary shift constituting ‘a systemic part of the process that leads to widespread bankruptcy’ (ibid., p.209).
(iii) `Making on the carry'
In Minsky’s theory, not only is the drive to innovate endogenous but the prospective gains which fuel it also arise endogenously in the form of arbitrage opportunities generated by an (initially) healthy financial state. ‘In a world dominated by hedge finance and in which little value is placed on liquiditythe interest rate structure’, he argues, ‘yields profit opportunities in financing positions in capital assets’ (Minsky 1986, pp.210-211). These arise in three ways:#p#分页标题#e#
(a) ‘in an economy with a robust financial structure, short-term interest rates ... will be significantly lower than the yield from owning capital.’ (p.211)
(b) ‘interest and principal payments on longer-term private debts, which are synchronized to their pay-outs on quasi-rents that capital assets are expected to yield, will be low relative to these quasi-rents’ (ibid.)
and
(c) ‘the interest rate on short-term money-like liabilities of firms and financial institutions will be lower than on the longer-term liabilities used in hedge-financing positions in capital assets’ (ibid.).
These are the factors that ‘induce units to engage in speculative finance’ (ibid.). The use of the generic term unit is significant here, reflecting Minsky’s insight that these inducements alter the portfolio choices not only of firms but of households and financial institutions too.
It is pertinent to note that a firm which switches from equity to long-term debt as a source of finance may or may not, by so doing, become a speculative-financing unit in either of the two senses distinguished above. However, a unit that borrows short to finance the acquisition of longer-term assets is speculatively financed in both senses, and, throughout his writings, Minsky emphasises that this seeking to ‘make on the carry’ (ibid.) between a short-term liability structure and a long-term asset profile is the prime factor that injects fragility into the financial structure as ‘an endogenous phenomenon’ (p.210).
(iv) 障碍降低:孕育成功Lowering the orthodox barrier: success breeds success
The drive to innovate in the direction of speculative financing, Minsky recognises, meets with resistance. ‘Bankers’, he notes, ‘are always seeking to innovate in financial usages. But orthodoxy and conservatism can form a barrier to the assimilation of innovation’ (Minsky 1986, p.212). However, he notes that legislative and administrative intervention by governments and central bankers may be one operative force conducive to change (p.197). Another that certainly will be operative is the fact that a ‘period of success of the economy ... will lead to a lowering of the financial innovation UEL, Department of Economics, Working Paper No.22, December 1999 7 barrier, whereas a period of bankruptcies .. has the potential for raising (it).’ (p.212, note).
As Minsky points out, it is significant that even the effect of success in driving financial innovation forward is an endogenous outcome. ‘The intrusion of speculative relations into a system of mainly hedge financing’, he observes, ‘increases the demand for assets and therefore ... leads to capital gains.’ And, conversely, ‘(a) regime in which capital gains are being earned and are expected is a favorable environment for engaging in speculative .. finance’ (ibid., p.210).
Furthermore, he notes, ‘the governor mechanism ..... is often dominated by positive, disequilibrating feedbacks. An increase in the demand prices for capital assets relative to the supply prices of investment output increases investment, which increases not only profits but also the ratio of profits to payment commitments on outstanding debts, the amount of financing available from banks and financial markets at any set of terms, and businessmen's willingness to invest’ (ibid., p.228).#p#分页标题#e#
(v) The transition from robustness to fragility Eventually ‘success breeds a disregard of the possibility of failure: the absence of serious financial difficulties over a substantial period leads to the development of a euphoric economy in which increasing short-term financing of long positions becomes a normal way of life’ (Minsky 1986, p.213). In such an atmosphere, even hedge financing can become ‘based upon unrealistic euphoric expectations with respect to ... product and factor markets’ (p.209). Thus, for Minsky, waves of bullish sentiment that sweep financial systems are not episodes dissociated from what has gone before but are themselves part of a multi-faceted endogenous process.
The effect is to undermine an initially robust financial structure, in which hedge financing predominates (ibid., p.305). For ‘a marked increase in the fragility of an economy occurs as ... financing relations assure that an investment boom will lead to an environment with increased speculative financing of positions, which in turn will lead to conditions conducive to a crisis’ (pp.217- 218). For Minsky, crisis is characterised by the inability of units to refinance their positions ‘through normal channels’ (Minsky 1977, p.140).
(vi) 危机的触发The triggers of crisis
‘(I)n a fragile financial system continued normal functioning can be disrupted by some not unusual event’, Minsky writes (ibid. p.139). Indications as to what these events might be are given in the following passage:
A break in the boom occurs whenever ... reversals in present-value relations take place. Often this occurs after the increase in demand financed by speculative finance has raised interest rates, wages of labor, and prices of material so that profit margins and thus the ability to validate the past are eroded (Minsky 1986, p.220).
The disruptive events cited here are of course themselves entirely endogenous to the process. At the same time, it is important for present purposes to note that Minsky’s theory allows for the possibility that the catalyst of crisis may also be some other, ‘external’ event9 . However, such an event would be far removed from the exogenous shock that is the staple of neo-classical theory. For Minsky insists that ‘financial fragility .. is not due to either accidents or policy errors ...(O)ur economy endogenously develops fragile or crisis-prone financial structures’ (1977, pp.139-140). The crucial point here is that, for Minsky, the reasons why a ‘shocking’ event actually has the power to shock are emphatically endogenous.
Minsky, as we have already been noted, stresses the fact that banks themselves frequently engage in speculative financing. He sees this a key factor leading to the generalisation of crisis conditions, observing that speculative financing activity on their part means that the pressures of disruptive events ‘are often acutely felt by financial intermediaries, and a deterioration in their abilitiy to make position will adversely affect the balance sheets of their liability holders’. As a result a ‘potential for contagion exists’, although, he adds, ‘(i)ntervention by central banks ..... serves to abort such contagious developments’ (1986, p.219).#p#分页标题#e#
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
总结结论
The South East Asian crisis began in early July 1997. Serious contagion of financial disturbance across countries ensued, fuelled by the fact that the region's currencies were on the whole pegged to the US dollar. Rigid in the face of changes in domestic conditions, these currencies became prime targets for speculators once the latter took the view that they were overvalued. The currency crisis in Thailand in the summer of 1997 (when the baht was devalued) spread almost overnight to Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. In November 1997 South Korea's currency also came under heavy pressure from speculators. The won was devalued but the IMF had to be called in to help finance its short-term debts. Several major firms in South Korea were declared insolvent and by mid-December smaller firms were failing at the rate of 50 per day. Short-term interest rates soared to just over 30 per cent.
Minsky argued that high growth rates and low unemployment were threatened by the instability of the financial system. The lesson to be drawn from recent financial crises in South East Asia, andelsewhere, is that liberalisation intensifies this threat by adding further major stresses to the financial infrastructure. Our thesis is that we have witnessed in South East Asia a financial crisis explicable in classically Minskyan terms in which financial liberalisation has acted as the key euphoria-inducing factor. The timing and features of liberalisation in the five countries are exactly right to account for the state of fragility which evidently existed when the crisis broke and for the form that the crisis took. Grabel (1995) has argued that under financial liberalisation economies are forced to bear a greater degree of ‘ambient’ risk than they would otherwise face. A Minskyan analysis gives us a clear insight into how that comes about.
Whilst orthodox accounts of the Asian crisis are essentially a priori, a close examination of the course of events which led to the crisis points to the very different conclusion that the fundamental problem was not over- but under-regulation, as we have argued (see, also, Singh, 1998; Chang, 1998). Our extension of Minsky’s work shows how dangerous an illusion it is to imagine that a governmental retreat from involvement in the functioning of the financial system will do anything to enhance stability. Our contention is that the Minskyan approach, by providing us with the tools to dispel such illusions, offers original and general insights into the financial crises that have been so grave a feature of the world economy in the last twenty years#p#分页标题#e#
1.引言
海曼明斯基的金融不稳定假说似乎非常适用于亚洲金融危机。不足为奇,尽管许多评论家可能一直受他思想的影响，但很少有人明确试图以此为基础来分析这场危机。例如，1998年11月，整个《剑桥经济学杂志》上都在分析亚洲危机、但它只有一篇文章直接提及明斯基。为了填补分析残缺, 本文对明斯基的研究表明它确实提供了一个亚洲金融危机令人信服的解释和一个有重要意义的政策。
一个因素可能导致忽视如此丰富的潜在来源的理解是,显然与开放亚洲金融危机的本质不同, 明斯基的模型设定在一个封闭的经济框架。另一个原因是,他的研究早于当前金融自由化的时代。在本文的下一节,我们认为他的“金融不稳定假说“实际上可以很容易扩展到开放的经济,“自由化”案例。在这种理论基础上,本文的第三部分旨在具体提出明斯基在东南亚金融危机的适用性。而第四部分将 解释Minskyan拒绝对立的账户，而是发展重大政策影响的讨论,最后,提供了一些结论。
1 INTRODUCTION 引言
Hyman Minsky’s ‘Financial Instability Hypothesis’ would seem to have obvious application to the recent experience of financial crisis in Asia. It is therefore a matter of surprise that, while many commentators may have been influenced by his ideas, so few have attempted to use them explicitly as a basis analysing the crisis. The whole of the November 1998 issue of the Cambridge Journal of Economics, for example, was devoted to the crisis in Asia. Yet it contained just one direct reference to Minsky (1986). In an attempt to fill the analytical gap, this paper seeks to build on Minsky’s work to show that it does indeed offer the basis for a convincing interpretation of the crisis in Asia and one which has important implications for policy.
One factor which may have contributed to the neglect of so rich a potential source of understanding is that, in contrast to the patently open nature of the Asian crisis, Minsky’s model is developed within a closed economy framework. Another is that his work predates the current era of financial ‘liberalisation’. In the next section of this paper, we argue that his ‘Financial Instability Hypothesis can in fact be extended readily to the open-economy, ‘liberalised’, case. On this theoretical basis, the paper’s third section proceeds to put forward a specifically Minskyan account of the road to financial crisis in South East Asia, whilst the fourth section considers and rejects a number of rival explanations in favour of this Minskyan account. Major policy implications of the discussion are then developed, before, finally, some conclusions are offered.
Minsky's vision was that ‘the normal functioning of our economy leads to financial trauma and crises ... (I)n short, ... financially complex capitalism is inherently flawed’ (Minsky 1986, p.287, italics in original). In contrast, the conventional wisdom of today is that markets ‘work’. On this latter view, the proposition that the source of financial crisis must be exogenous to the financial system and located either in government failure or ‘shocks’ (or both) is taken as more or less axiomatic truth. Equally, the fact that financial crisis and the spread of financial ‘liberalisation’ have coincided in Asia can only be regarded as a matter of chance.#p#分页标题#e#
The contention of this paper is that such judgements are based on a failure to understand (or a refusal to recognise) the endemic instability of financial markets. We are sure our extension of Hyman Minsky's ideas (essentially 1957, 1975, 1982, 1986) to dispel these illusions of the age would have been warmly applauded by the man himself, had he been alive today.
2明斯基在一个封闭的、开放和自由化的经济MINSKY IN A CLOSED, AN OPEN AND A ‘LIBERALISED’ ECONOMY
In this part of the paper, we set out and attempt to justify our extension of Minsky’s theory to the open economy (Section 2.2) and the financially ‘liberalised’ economy (Section 2.3). First, however, in Section 2.1, we point to various features of his closed-economy analysis that are of relevance to our extension of it and elaborate on them to the brief extent necessary to support our later argument.
2.1明斯基的封闭型经济下分析Minsky’s closed-economy analysis
The essence of Minsky’s originality is to be found in the central motif of his work, the thesis that forces capable of producing financial fragility are built into the system itself. The following passage succinctly expresses his view:
(I)n a world of uncertainty, given capital assets with a long gestation period, ... the successful functioning of an economy within an initially robust financial structure will lead to a structure that becomes more fragile as time elapses. Endogenous forces UEL, Department of Economics, Working Paper No.22, December 1999 4 make a situation dominated by hedge finance unstable ... (Minsky 1986, p.213)
Certain elements of the analysis Minsky developed to support this thesis are key for the purposes of the present discussion. These are identified under the series of sub-headings that follow.
(i) The drive towards financial innovation For Minsky, the ‘drive to innovate financing practices by profit-seeking households, businesses, and bankers’ (ibid, p.197) is at the root of the financial instability inherent in capitalism. For, as he argues: ‘Profits are available to innovators in financial structures and institutions as well as to innovators in products, production techniques, and marketing’ (p.298) and ‘(a)s capitalism abhors unexploited profit opportunities, market instruments and usages develop to exploit interest rate gaps’ (p.213).
In all this, financial intermediaries play a central role. ‘Because bankers live in the same expectational climate as businessmen’4 , Minsky writes, ‘profit-seeking bankers will find ways of accommodating their customers’ (p.228). Specifically, ‘(t)hey actively solicit borrowing customers, undertake financing commitments, ... build connections with business and other bankers, and seek out funds’ (pp.229-230). It is noteworthy here that Minsky does not simply cite bankers’ innovating activities as lenders but stresses the fact that their compulsion to innovate extends to their own borrowing activities too.#p#分页标题#e#
(ii) 对冲,投机和庞氏融资Hedge, speculative and Ponzi finance
It is not necessary to elaborate in a general way on this celebrated conceptual trinity in this paper5 . However, critical to the discussion below is the fact that Minsky characterises the speculativefinancing unit in two closely related but not entirely overlapping ways. On the one hand, he offers a definition in terms of such a unit’s own cash flow prospects. Thus he writes that ‘the balance sheet cash flows from a unit can be larger than the expected income receipts so that the only way they canbe met is by rolling over ... debt; units that roll over debt are engaged in speculative finance’ (1986, p.203). At the same time he also refers to the speculative-financing unit in terms of the impact on it of changes in financial market conditions. For example, he states: ‘speculative ..... finance units are vulnerable to .. financial-market developments .. as well as to product and factor market events: increases in interest rates will raise cash-flow commitments without increasing prospective receipts. Furthermore, as they must continuously refinance their positions, they are vulnerable to financial market disruptions’ (ibid., p.209).
For Minsky, the ‘prototypical speculative financial organization’ (ibid., p.207) is the commercial bank. In the case of banks, his two characterisations are clearly coincident: they have continually to engage in refinancing of their liability structures and they are vulnerable to adverse developments in financial markets. However, even in the closed economy, other cases are not so clear-cut. Consider a firm that has issued variable-rate, long-dated debt on terms that it expects to be able to meet comfortably at the time of issue. At that point in time the firm is, on the first of Minsky’s criteria, a hedge-financing unit6 . For it does not foresee having to roll its debt over. On the other hand, it is, from the moment the debt is issued, in a speculative financing position in the sense that it is vulnerable to adverse changes in financial market conditions. We draw attention to this ambiguity here since it takes on some significance when Minsky’s theory is extended to the open economy .
The speculative financing state is also critical in that it exposes the unit to the risk of ‘being forced into Ponzi-financing arrangements8 by income shortfalls or interest cost escalations’, this involuntary shift constituting ‘a systemic part of the process that leads to widespread bankruptcy’ (ibid., p.209).
(iii) `Making on the carry'
In Minsky’s theory, not only is the drive to innovate endogenous but the prospective gains which fuel it also arise endogenously in the form of arbitrage opportunities generated by an (initially) healthy financial state. ‘In a world dominated by hedge finance and in which little value is placed on liquiditythe interest rate structure’, he argues, ‘yields profit opportunities in financing positions in capital assets’ (Minsky 1986, pp.210-211). These arise in three ways:#p#分页标题#e#
(a) ‘in an economy with a robust financial structure, short-term interest rates ... will be significantly lower than the yield from owning capital.’ (p.211)
(b) ‘interest and principal payments on longer-term private debts, which are synchronized to their pay-outs on quasi-rents that capital assets are expected to yield, will be low relative to these quasi-rents’ (ibid.)
and
(c) ‘the interest rate on short-term money-like liabilities of firms and financial institutions will be lower than on the longer-term liabilities used in hedge-financing positions in capital assets’ (ibid.).
These are the factors that ‘induce units to engage in speculative finance’ (ibid.). The use of the generic term unit is significant here, reflecting Minsky’s insight that these inducements alter the portfolio choices not only of firms but of households and financial institutions too.
It is pertinent to note that a firm which switches from equity to long-term debt as a source of finance may or may not, by so doing, become a speculative-financing unit in either of the two senses distinguished above. However, a unit that borrows short to finance the acquisition of longer-term assets is speculatively financed in both senses, and, throughout his writings, Minsky emphasises that this seeking to ‘make on the carry’ (ibid.) between a short-term liability structure and a long-term asset profile is the prime factor that injects fragility into the financial structure as ‘an endogenous phenomenon’ (p.210).
(iv) 障碍降低:孕育成功Lowering the orthodox barrier: success breeds success
The drive to innovate in the direction of speculative financing, Minsky recognises, meets with resistance. ‘Bankers’, he notes, ‘are always seeking to innovate in financial usages. But orthodoxy and conservatism can form a barrier to the assimilation of innovation’ (Minsky 1986, p.212). However, he notes that legislative and administrative intervention by governments and central bankers may be one operative force conducive to change (p.197). Another that certainly will be operative is the fact that a ‘period of success of the economy ... will lead to a lowering of the financial innovation UEL, Department of Economics, Working Paper No.22, December 1999 7 barrier, whereas a period of bankruptcies .. has the potential for raising (it).’ (p.212, note).
As Minsky points out, it is significant that even the effect of success in driving financial innovation forward is an endogenous outcome. ‘The intrusion of speculative relations into a system of mainly hedge financing’, he observes, ‘increases the demand for assets and therefore ... leads to capital gains.’ And, conversely, ‘(a) regime in which capital gains are being earned and are expected is a favorable environment for engaging in speculative .. finance’ (ibid., p.210).
Furthermore, he notes, ‘the governor mechanism ..... is often dominated by positive, disequilibrating feedbacks. An increase in the demand prices for capital assets relative to the supply prices of investment output increases investment, which increases not only profits but also the ratio of profits to payment commitments on outstanding debts, the amount of financing available from banks and financial markets at any set of terms, and businessmen's willingness to invest’ (ibid., p.228).#p#分页标题#e#
(v) The transition from robustness to fragility Eventually ‘success breeds a disregard of the possibility of failure: the absence of serious financial difficulties over a substantial period leads to the development of a euphoric economy in which increasing short-term financing of long positions becomes a normal way of life’ (Minsky 1986, p.213). In such an atmosphere, even hedge financing can become ‘based upon unrealistic euphoric expectations with respect to ... product and factor markets’ (p.209). Thus, for Minsky, waves of bullish sentiment that sweep financial systems are not episodes dissociated from what has gone before but are themselves part of a multi-faceted endogenous process.
The effect is to undermine an initially robust financial structure, in which hedge financing predominates (ibid., p.305). For ‘a marked increase in the fragility of an economy occurs as ... financing relations assure that an investment boom will lead to an environment with increased speculative financing of positions, which in turn will lead to conditions conducive to a crisis’ (pp.217- 218). For Minsky, crisis is characterised by the inability of units to refinance their positions ‘through normal channels’ (Minsky 1977, p.140).
(vi) 危机的触发The triggers of crisis
‘(I)n a fragile financial system continued normal functioning can be disrupted by some not unusual event’, Minsky writes (ibid. p.139). Indications as to what these events might be are given in the following passage:
A break in the boom occurs whenever ... reversals in present-value relations take place. Often this occurs after the increase in demand financed by speculative finance has raised interest rates, wages of labor, and prices of material so that profit margins and thus the ability to validate the past are eroded (Minsky 1986, p.220).
The disruptive events cited here are of course themselves entirely endogenous to the process. At the same time, it is important for present purposes to note that Minsky’s theory allows for the possibility that the catalyst of crisis may also be some other, ‘external’ event9 . However, such an event would be far removed from the exogenous shock that is the staple of neo-classical theory. For Minsky insists that ‘financial fragility .. is not due to either accidents or policy errors ...(O)ur economy endogenously develops fragile or crisis-prone financial structures’ (1977, pp.139-140). The crucial point here is that, for Minsky, the reasons why a ‘shocking’ event actually has the power to shock are emphatically endogenous.
Minsky, as we have already been noted, stresses the fact that banks themselves frequently engage in speculative financing. He sees this a key factor leading to the generalisation of crisis conditions, observing that speculative financing activity on their part means that the pressures of disruptive events ‘are often acutely felt by financial intermediaries, and a deterioration in their abilitiy to make position will adversely affect the balance sheets of their liability holders’. As a result a ‘potential for contagion exists’, although, he adds, ‘(i)ntervention by central banks ..... serves to abort such contagious developments’ (1986, p.219).#p#分页标题#e#
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
总结结论
The South East Asian crisis began in early July 1997. Serious contagion of financial disturbance across countries ensued, fuelled by the fact that the region's currencies were on the whole pegged to the US dollar. Rigid in the face of changes in domestic conditions, these currencies became prime targets for speculators once the latter took the view that they were overvalued. The currency crisis in Thailand in the summer of 1997 (when the baht was devalued) spread almost overnight to Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. In November 1997 South Korea's currency also came under heavy pressure from speculators. The won was devalued but the IMF had to be called in to help finance its short-term debts. Several major firms in South Korea were declared insolvent and by mid-December smaller firms were failing at the rate of 50 per day. Short-term interest rates soared to just over 30 per cent.
Minsky argued that high growth rates and low unemployment were threatened by the instability of the financial system. The lesson to be drawn from recent financial crises in South East Asia, andelsewhere, is that liberalisation intensifies this threat by adding further major stresses to the financial infrastructure. Our thesis is that we have witnessed in South East Asia a financial crisis explicable in classically Minskyan terms in which financial liberalisation has acted as the key euphoria-inducing factor. The timing and features of liberalisation in the five countries are exactly right to account for the state of fragility which evidently existed when the crisis broke and for the form that the crisis took. Grabel (1995) has argued that under financial liberalisation economies are forced to bear a greater degree of ‘ambient’ risk than they would otherwise face. A Minskyan analysis gives us a clear insight into how that comes about.
Whilst orthodox accounts of the Asian crisis are essentially a priori, a close examination of the course of events which led to the crisis points to the very different conclusion that the fundamental problem was not over- but under-regulation, as we have argued (see, also, Singh, 1998; Chang, 1998). Our extension of Minsky’s work shows how dangerous an illusion it is to imagine that a governmental retreat from involvement in the functioning of the financial system will do anything to enhance stability. Our contention is that the Minskyan approach, by providing us with the tools to dispel such illusions, offers original and general insights into the financial crises that have been so grave a feature of the world economy in the last twenty years#p#分页标题#e#
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