Abstract
Year 2008 is remembered, in History books, as the year of a major economic crisis throughout the world. As most papers put it mentioning as, "The worst since the great depression". But as the world suddenly pays attention to its economic system and its (present) prominent imperfections, it may shed some light on another major economic crisis: The Asian crisis of 1997. The crisis affected the majority of Asia, the countries suffering the most being Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines. Of course, it wasn't as discussed as it is in today's situation, probably because it only affected the developing countries and it was blamed on its uncontrolled development. In this way people didn't have to question the system. Eleven years have passed by, and it is now possible for economists to gather policymaking lessons about what happened in 1997 in Asia and what was done to deal with it.
But before we go any further with this study, it is absolutely crucial to bring up the facts about the above-mentioned Asian crisis, without going too much in detail. In the early nineties, the world was in admiration at what was commonly called the "Asian economic miracle", and the spectacular growths of the Asian "tigers" or "dragons" (which was around 10% GDP on average) were recommended as the models to be followed for all developing countries. This growth was sustained (only for certain countries) since the sixties, who were following the footsteps of ultra-dynamic post-war Japan. They set a textbook pattern of export-driven growth, where exterior demand was a motor of fast growth (taking advantage of cheap labor in these countries), and investments were made to improve education, and thus improving the population's productivity
