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Introduction: Transmission Mechanisms and Impacts of the Global Financial Crisis on the Developing World

At the outbreak of the financial crisis in the mid-summer 2007, financial turmoil initially appeared to have confined itself, more or less, to financial markets and institutions based in the US and Western Europe. For a year or so, the global economy managed, on the whole, to maintain its momentum on the back of the buoyant economic growth of emerging market economies and also resource-rich developing economies which enjoyed a commodity boom since 2002. The ‘decoupling’ hypothesis of emerging and developing economies from the financial turmoil in the mature economies was advanced, and largely prevailed for a year or so. However, a series of events that hit major financial institutions in Wall Street in midSeptember 2008 shocked the world and radically altered both the fate and the course of globalised economies. By the close of 2008, the world economy had rapidly entered into a ‘Globally Synchronised Slowdown’ phase and then, in the first quarter of 2009, headed towards a ‘Global Recession’. As days passed by, there was a growing fear that the on-going financial crisis may well turn into a ‘Global Depression’ of the twenty-first century – the first financial and economic crisis of a truly global nature since the 1930s. The speed, at which the world economy has fallen victim to the recessionary waves of the financial turmoil in the US and Europe, caught everyone by surprise. The crisis engulfed all economies in the developing world, including emerging market economies in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia with a full exposure to events in financial markets as well as low income developing countries in Africa, Asia and the Latin American and Caribbean region with limited financial market linkages. The Global Financial Crisis (the GFC) was transmitted through several channels to the developing world. The financial market linkage was particularly immediate and severe for emerging market economies that have fully integrated into international capital markets through financial globalisation. It took multiple forms: the large-scale currency depreciation; the collapse of stock markets’ prices; the escalating cost of bond and debt financing; the sharp reduction in the international issuance of bonds and syndicated loans as well as in private debt and equity capital flows to emerging markets; the continued high volatility characterising asset and currency markets; and the escalating cost of trade finance and difficulties in accessing trade credit in the aftermath of the financial turmoil. This channel quickly worked directly and indirectly through to low-income developing countries via recessionary effects, leading to the rapid collapse of