Political Instability and the August 1998 Ruble Crisis

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to highlight the importance of political instability, defined as frequent changes in and of government, in undermining the Russian exchange rate based stabilization program of the 1990s. The empirical evidence supports the significance of political instability along with economic fundamentals in determining Russian real effective exchange rate and exchange market pressure, used as a proxy to the crisis.Currency crises, political instability