What Is Financial Contagion During an Economic Crisis?

By: Flaka Ismaili    March 15, 2021

As the novel virus spreads, several cities are placed under quarantine, causing panic buying, widespread looting, and violence. Our experts think it’s a realistic story — so realistic that Rebecca Katz, director of the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University, says she often shows the film’s ending to the students in her class on emerging infectious diseases. The Asian financial markets crisis is one of the first examples of such a scenario. Another popular example is the Great depression which began in the United States in 1929 and continued for almost a decade.

It usually occurs when a financial crisis or negative implications of the crisis spreads from one economy to another, often like a disease. The strength of an economy can help reduce or magnify the shocks due to contagion. If markets are very fragile economic shocks in nearby regions can amplify the negative impact on a country. Contagion, also often known as financial or economic contagion, is the spread of any economic crisis from one region or market to another, domestic or international. Meanwhile, some companies have attempted to couple emotional contagion with technology itself. In one such Coca-Cola marketing initiative, the company created two campaigns that intended to elicit happiness from customers and link positive emotions to Coca-Cola products.

  1. According to a study published in the Frontiers of Public Health, the duration of infectious shedding of the Delta variant was more than twice as long as the SARS-CoV-2 virus back in 2019.
  2. EIS is a real organization, and the movie’s depiction of its staff earns praise for accuracy from the specialists we interviewed.
  3. But in medical and scientific contexts, communicate can mean “to give to another, impart, transmit,” as a disease.
  4. A contagious disease is one that can be spread from person to person.

In some cases, contagious diseases can become an epidemic or even a pandemic. An epidemic is a sudden disease outbreak that affects a large number of people in a particular region, community, or population. In an epidemic, the number of people affected by the disease is larger than what is normally expected. A pandemic is a disease epidemic that has spread to a large group of people across a large region, multiple nations, or continents. When markets are fragile, a strong negative shock in one market can not only cause that market to fail but spread damage to other markets and, perhaps, the entire economy. Markets that depend on debt, a specific commodity, or where conditions prevent the smooth adjustment of prices and quantities, entry and exit of participants, and adjustments to business models or operations will be more fragile and less flexible.

From the consumer side, many consumer goods are substitutes or complement one another. From the producer side, the inputs for any business can be substitutes and complements for one another, and the labor and capital that a business requires may be used in different types of industries and markets. Taking precautions against contracting a virus is critical for health care providers and lab workers.

Are Certain Variants More Contagious?

Other financial institutions, such as the Lehman bank and American International Group (AIG), started to feel the effects of the crisis.[21] The severity of this crisis grew, and most U.S. and European banks were pulling back their international loans. This move caused major ig sentiment indicator financial problems across the world, especially for those countries that rely heavily on international borrowing. Financial contagion was felt severely, especially in countries whose financial systems were vulnerable due to local housing bubbles and current account deficits.

Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)—also called venereal diseases—are transmitted through sexual contact. Blood and other body fluids are often the vehicle through which STDs spread. Another term for spread is communicate, hence communicable (capable of being communicated). Most of us probably use the word communicate for the various ways we share thoughts, feelings, information, and so on through talking and writing. But in medical and scientific contexts, communicate can mean “to give to another, impart, transmit,” as a disease.

An infected person is usually most contagious during the first two to three days of a cold, when symptoms are the worst. The 1997 Asian financial markets crisis was among the first examples of the term being used. The real and nominal interconnections of markets can propagate and even magnify economic shocks, likening the effect to the spread of disease like a contagion. Even though the film is not a documentary, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pointed out when the movie was released, it does have scientific content — sometimes accurate, sometimes not — about viral outbreaks. So we asked some specialists in global health and infectious diseases to fact-check the movie’s science.

More from Merriam-Webster on contagion

Thus a change in demand or supply of one particular good can impact other goods that other countries may produce. The crisis started in Thailand, where the government lacked enough foreign currency to continue to peg the Thai Bhat to the US dollar, eventually leading to a collapse in the Thai Bhat. A common example cited is a burst in credit bubbles that can spread to neighboring countries and often worldwide. An example of this is when people observe other drivers speeding on the highway, and they start to speed themselves, or it might explain instances of “doping” that occur in waves among some professional athletes. Such as the June Bug incident or the epidemics of dancing manias in the Middle Ages, as people would spontaneously dance until exhaustion. One such episode, tarantism, was believed to have been caused by tarantula bites.

How Long Are You Contagious With COVID-19?

Bad loans were made, risks were taken due to misunderstandings, and the level of debt continued to grow. “After the start of the crisis, national equity betas increased and average returns fell substantially”.[20] The first currency that faced problems was the Thai baht. With the Thai baht having issues, it doubled the debt of Thai organizations, which started the spread of the crisis to other countries. As this was happening, investors started reevaluating their investments in this region. This caused the flow of money to disappear rapidly, resulting in the growth of this crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has proven to have a global impact on economies, markets, industrial sectors, and attitudes toward financial risk, international trade, and corporate practices.

What is the difference between communicable vs. noncommunicable?

At a couple of points in Contagion, epidemiologists in the film discuss what the virus’ “R0” (pronounced R-naught), or reproductive rate, is. R0 refers to the average number of people infected by one sick person, and the R0 in Contagion climbs https://g-markets.net/ as the film progresses. Wortmann notes that “with a large outbreak, it would be difficult for all health care workers to [completely] maintain appropriate infection prevention measures, and I think the film recognizes those gaps.”

Financial contagion

Trade links is another type of shock that has its similarities to common shocks and financial links. These types of shocks are more focused on its integration causing local impacts. In some instances, especially in public health emergencies, it’s important we call out that a disease isn’t just infectious, but that it is contagious.

The recognition of emotions according to facial expressions is universal in world cultures (Brown, 2004), and facial expressions can communicate emotions ranging from approval to expectations and emotions. The bad business practices were a contagion among financial institutions. The rest of financial sectors in the particular region of an economy were all affected.

It comes from Middle French and Old French, as well as the Latin contingere, a variant stem of tangere, the Latin contāgiōn, Latin contāgiō/Latin contagio and the stem of contāgiō. In order to mimic someone’s emotions, you have to first recognize the emotion. Emotional cues are often subtle, so you likely aren’t always conscious of this realization. Hearing a mournful song when you’re having a great day can quickly change your mood. If you’re the one offering a listening ear, you might feel sad or distressed upon hearing about a friend’s troubles.

With the emergence of Omicron, the peak of viral shedding was two to three days later. Food poisoning is an infectious, if short-lived (acute, not chronic), disease. It’s not discussed as contagious because it is spread by eating contaminated food, not by sitting across from someone who has food poisoning. Sometimes waterborne is used to refer to diseases like cholera, which can spread through contaminated water.