International bank lending to emerging market countries: explaining the 1990s roller coaster

BIS Quarterly Review  | 
11 March 2002
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This special feature systematically examines the determinants of changes in the claims of BIS reporting banks on the largest emerging market countries in Asia and Latin America. The work is guided by the hypothesis that lending flows tend to be driven by economic fundamentals but that other factors can also at times be influential. Adopting a well known approach distinguishing between external ("push") and internal ("pull") determinants of lending flows, preliminary results show that both types of factors influence international bank lending. Additional tests suggest that international bank lending may have depended on the prevailing exchange rate regime.