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To date there has been greater awareness that the sudden interruption and reversal of capital flows can cause financial crisis. However for the most part it is thought that the volatility of capital flows applies predominantly to short-term flows and not longer-term capital flows such as FDI. The Malaysian experience of financial crisis challenges the conventional wisdom and has profound implications for other developing countries seeking to attract FDI flows as a source of long-term stable financing. Malaysia succumbed to crisis in spite of the fact that FDI flows accounted for the bulk of financial flows on average. This paper argues that FDI flows in Malaysia contributed to vulnerability to crisis by causing chronic current account deficits and was associated with a slowdown in export growth prior to the crisis. This suggests that when assessing a country's vulnerability to financial crisis, emphasis should not only be placed on the reversibility of flows but also on the macroeconomic impact of these flows. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Since achieving independence in 1957, Malaysia has experienced three recessions, each of which emanated from different sources of vulnerability. This paper analyses the policy response to economic crisis, in particular, the role of the New Economic Policy (NEP) which was introduced in 1970 and which remains in force today. It concludes that in spite of the diversity in the proximate causes of the crises, the policy response was consistent and sought to ensure that NEP objectives were paramount and the vested interests that had emerged as a result of the NEP and which were linked to the ruling party were preserved.

Prior to the onset of the Asian financial crisis there was a deterioration in the external trade position of most countries that were affected by the Asian currency crisis. However, little is known about why this occurred. This paper aims to identify the causes of a slowdown in export growth in Malaysia. While misaligned exchange rates have been widely cited as a cause of the slowdown in East Asia; in the Malaysian context at least a vulnerability to the downturn in the electronic cycle could also be a major factor leading to poor export performance. Using the US/yen dollar rate as a proxy for exchange rate misalignment and US total new orders for electronics as a proxy for global electronics demand, cointegration analysis was used to establish the likely causes of a slowdown in Malaysia's export performance. The empirical evidence suggests that the coincidence of exchange rate misalignment with a downturn in the global electronics demand cycle was responsible for the sharp deterioration in export performance.