Exploring financial crises data with self-organizing maps (SOM).

The recent Asian financial crises showed the need for a better understanding of the determinants of financial crises' aftermath. We used the SOM to explore the multidimensional properties of a data set of recent speculative attacks in search of potential associations between economic descriptors, and the size and duration of speculative attack's real effects. We found that speculative attack's real effects were associated with: the health of the banking system; the law origin; the level of economic development; the terms of trade; and the financial development. Interestingly, we did not find evidence of the beneficial roles played by the IMF and the high interest rate policies in solving financial crises.