Speculative attack

In economics, a speculative attack is a precipitous selling of untrustworthy assets by previously inactive speculators and the corresponding acquisition of some valuable assets (currencies, gold). The first model of a speculative attack was contained in a 1975 discussion paper on the gold market by Stephen Salant and Dale Henderson at the Federal Reserve Board. Paul Krugman, who visited the Board as a graduate student intern, soon^[1] adapted their mechanism^[2] to explain speculative attacks in the foreign exchange market.^[3]

There are now many hundreds of journal articles on financial speculative attacks, which are typically grouped into three categories: first, second, and third generation models. Salant has continued to explore real speculative attacks in a series of six articles.