Algunas hipótesis relacionadas con la crisis 1994-95 en México

A large number of hypotheses have been offered to explain the causes and circumstances of the December 1994 devaluation of the Mexican peso and the economic crisis that ensued. Some of them are based on ideas and data handled loosely and/or with no perspective, and frequently arrive at the exact opposite conclusion as that which would have been supported by the available information. This paper deals with some of the most often repeated of these conjectures and confronts them with what actually happened. It begins by reviewing the situation of the Mexican economy prior to the devaluation and then surveys, as possible causes for the crisis, the following: an overvalued currency, lax central bank credit, misleading and unequal information, politically motivated fiscal stimulus, insufficient domestic savings, and what is known in the literature as the “over-borrowing syndrome”. It concludes that despite possible improvements in the way the Mexican economy was managed before the crisis, the real causes are to be found on the combination of a semi-fixed exchange rate, the explosive availability of international short- term capital, and the cumulative, effect of the repeated political shocks that affected the Mexican scene during 1994.