The Triumph of the Rentiers?
causes of the 1997 Korean crisis, together with those of the crises in other Asian countries, have been hotly debated. Especially in the early days of the crisis, many commentators argued that it was caused by some fundamental institutional deficiencies of the Korean economy that encouraged inefficiencies and excesses by protecting the investors from the adverse consequences of their decisions.1 However, others, including surprisingly many mainstream economists, have argued that the crisis was largely the result of a mixture of the premature and ill-managed financial liberalization (and the dismantling of other interventionist policies) and the instability in the international financial market.2 This article sheds some new