ABSTRACT
The August 1998 crisis in Russia was followed in short order by a crisis in Brazil, a country that had attracted large amounts of foreign capital since the early 1990s despite uneven domestic macroeconomic performance, and that was consequently heavily represented in the portfolios of international emerging-market investors by the late 1990s. As a major focus of emerging market investment, Brazil was a frequent victim of international fi nancial contagion during the 1990s. It experienced notable fi nancial repercussions from the Mexican, Asian, and Russian crises, but the Russian crisis proved to have the most serious impact. It interacted with accumulated domestic vulnerabilities to fi nally trigger a major currency crisis in Brazil in January 1999.
