IESET.
Policies·th_baht_float_july_1997

Thailand Baht float (2 July 1997)

THA·1997 – 1997·enacted 1997-07-02·New Aspiration Party-led coalitioncandidate
movesmonetary expansion direction↓financial deregulation↓

What the policy did

Bank of Thailand announced adoption of managed-float exchange- rate regime on 2 July 1997 after exhausting ~$23bn of reserves (plus ~$24bn forward-swap commitments) in defence of the basket- pegged Baht from January 1997. Immediate Baht depreciation from 24.8/USD to 28-30/USD first day; to 56/USD by January 1998. Formally triggered the Asian financial crisis; Indonesia rupiah and other regional currencies followed. BoT Governor Rerngchai Marakanond resigned 28 July 1997. Chuan II government (from November 1997) negotiated broader IMF programme conditionality. Managed-float regime maintained through 2000s.

Policy-content fingerprint — what this policy moved, on which axes

Per invariant 3, reforms are scored by what they did on each channel-separated axis, not by the party that enacted them. This fingerprint is how the policy-match engine finds historical analogues.

intended
↓
financial deregulation
regulatory.financial_deregulation
Financial-sector regulation — banking separation, capital requirements, cross-border activity rules, derivatives oversight.
decreased · moderate
looser financial regulation
Post-float supervisory tightening and finance-company suspensions initiated crisis-response framework.
unintended / side-effect
↓
monetary expansion direction
monetary.monetary_expansion_direction
Direction of monetary-base expansion decisions relative to trend. Separate from fiscal.transfer_expansion even when correlated.
decreased · strong · unintended
contractionary (balance sheet shrink, rates above Taylor)
Post-float rate hike to 20%+ under IMF conditions; pro-cyclical tightening into contracting demand.

Enacted by

Empirical evidence — linked hypotheses

Explicit links are curated by the author. Inferred links are hypotheses in the library that test the same axes this policy moved — the framework's answer to "what does the data say about a policy like this?".

Across the 2008-2014 ZLB era and the 2020-2021 pandemic-response window, large-scale de-facto monetary finance of fiscal expansion in the US, Japan, and the Eurozone did not produce headline-CPI inflation consistent with naive quantity-theoretic monetisation predictions: cumulative central-bank balance-sheet expansion exceeded 15% of GDP while CPI YoY remained below 3% in each economy across both windows.
monetary_finance_zlb_no_inflationinferred
viamonetary.monetary_expansion_direction
REFUTED — CPI threshold breach: USA zlb_2008_2014 peak 3.81% in 2008; USA covid_2020_2021 peak 4.68% in 2021; Eurozone CPI not loaded
refuted
Every documented modern hyperinflation episode (Cagan ≥50% monthly inflation, Hanke-Krus catalogue) since 1900 falls into one of two categories: (a) the issuing state had material foreign-currency or gold-clause obligations, hard-currency-pegged debt, or external market dependency that left it operating effectively as a currency-user (Weimar reparations, Hungary 1945-46 occupation obligations, Yugoslavia FX debt, Zimbabwe USD obligations 2007+, Venezuela USD oil revenue dependency, Argentina USD debt, Lebanon USD-pegged banking system, Turkey 2021-2024 FX-denominated debt), or (b) the issuing state experienced a documented physical supply collapse independent of the monetary regime (Weimar Ruhr occupation, Hungary post-WW2 occupation/reparation, Zimbabwe land-reform output collapse, Venezuela oil-sector collapse).
currency_user_vs_issuer_hyperinflation_classificationinferred
viamonetary.monetary_expansion_directionregulatory.financial_deregulation
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING
run pending
Post-2008 large-scale asset purchase programmes by the Federal Reserve, ECB, Bank of England, and Bank of Japan produced a measurable divergence between asset-price inflation (equities and residential real estate) and headline consumer-price inflation until roughly 2021.
qe_asset_inflation_vs_cpi_divergence_post_2008inferred
viamonetary.monetary_expansion_direction
refuted — Only 2 of 8 countries had even a 0.10 log-point asset-vs-CPI gap by 2020 (mean GAP_2020 = -0.02). The post-2008 divergence story does not survive a pa…
refuted
Statutory price ceilings set below plausible market-clearing prices produce measurable shortage indicators — stockouts, queue formation, black-market emergence, quality degradation, and in monetary- expansion contexts, large divergences between official and parallel- market prices.
price_controls_shortage_effectinferred
viamonetary.monetary_expansion_directionregulatory.financial_deregulation
SUPPORTED — all 4 canonical episodes show the shortage signature (parallel ratio > 1.5 or post/pre inflation >= 1.5x). Aggregate event-time ATT (post 0..+5, log…
supported
In a panel of advanced economies 1987-2007, base-money expansion and broad money growth correlate positively with asset-price indices (equity, real estate) but only weakly with headline CPI inflation.
austrian_monetary_expansion_asset_bubble_not_cpi_panelinferred
viamonetary.monetary_expansion_direction
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — insufficient observations after listwise deletion (21)
run pending
Statutory price ceilings set below market-clearing prices reliably produce shortages, rationing via queue or privilege, quality degradation, and black-market arbitrage — across every documented episode where enforcement is sustained.
price_controls_produce_shortages_and_quality_degradationinferred
viamonetary.monetary_expansion_direction
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — insufficient pre-period coverage (years=41, donors=1)
run pending
Following Koo (2008, 2014), the post-2008 advanced-economy recovery exhibited the diagnostic pattern of a balance-sheet recession: the private sector (households especially, plus non-financial business in the most leveraged countries) shifted simultaneously from net borrowing to net saving in pursuit of debt reduction, even when policy interest rates were at the zero lower bound.
gfc_balance_sheet_recession_post_2008_household_dual_mandateinferred
viamonetary.monetary_expansion_directionregulatory.financial_deregulation
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — treatment 'household_saving_rate' has no within-country variation under country fixed effects
run pending
Monetary base expansion (M2 growth) correlates with asset price inflation in equities and real estate with a lag, measurable via cointegration and lead-lag analysis across major developed economies 2008-2025.
m2_expansion_correlates_with_asset_price_inflationinferred
viamonetary.monetary_expansion_directionregulatory.financial_deregulation
partial — Housing leg met the >=6/10 + positive-mean thresholds but equities did not. Equities: 5/9 non-negative, mean lag-1 corr = +0.198. Housing: 6/10 non-ne…
partial

Similar historical policies

Ranked by axis-fingerprint overlap with this policy. Direction match bolded — those are the closest historical analogues. Shape of the match is what drives policy-outcome comparison, not the country or party label.

Korea IMF programme conditions and implementation (1997-2000)
KOR·1997
match
1.9
monetary expansion directionfinancial deregulation
Thailand IMF Stand-By Arrangement (1997)
THA·1997
match
1.9
monetary expansion directionfinancial deregulation
Turkey 2001 banking and currency crisis
TUR·2000
match
1.9
financial deregulationmonetary expansion direction
Plano Cruzado (Brazil, February 1986)
BRA·1986
match
1.7
monetary expansion directionfinancial deregulation
Plano Collor I — asset freeze (March 1990)
BRA·1990
match
1.7
financial deregulationmonetary expansion direction
China austerity and rectification programme 1988-1991
CHN·1988
match
1.7
monetary expansion directionfinancial deregulation
Property-Developer 'Three Red Lines' Framework 2020
CHN·2020
match
1.7
financial deregulationmonetary expansion direction
Birr float and FX regime liberalisation
ETH·2024
match
1.4
monetary expansion directionfinancial deregulation

References