External Factors in Emerging Market Recoveries: An Empirical Investigation

We estimate conditional duration models to analyse recovery processes in emerging market economies. Our reduced form specification is parsimonious, as we focus on the effect of growth in the US, EU, and Japan on the prospects for economic recovery in emerging markets experiencing recessions. In order to assess the robustness and forecasting capability of our results, we performed out-of-sample predictions using recently available data pertaining to the economies hit by the Asian crisis. The results of this exercise show that external factors beyond the control of the authorities can sucessfully explain the bouncing back of most emerging markets economies hit by the Asian crisis.