IMF Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit
comments and to encourage debate. The views expressed in IMF Working Papers are those of the
author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management.
IMF Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit
comments and to encourage debate. The views expressed in IMF Working Papers are those of the
author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management.
This paper proposes a tractable Sudden Stop model to explain the main patterns in firm level data in a sample of Southeast Asian firms during the Asian crisis. The model, which features trend shocks and financial frictions, is able to generate the main patterns observed in the sample during and following the Asian crisis, including the ensuing credit-less recovery, which are also patterns broadly shared by most Sudden Stop episodes as documented in Calvo et al. (2006). The model also proposes a novel explanation as to why small firms experience steeper declines than their larger peers as documented in this paper. This size effect is generated under the assumption that small firms are growth firms, to which there is support in the data. Trend shocks when combined with financial frictions in this model also generate strong leverage effects in line with what is observed in the sample, and with other observations from the literature.