Barry J. Eichengreen, George & Helen Pardee Professor of Economics & Political Science, University of California, Berkeley: It will be another rough year for emerging markets in 2016. But unlike 2015, when investors were fixated on instability in Chinese markets and the bungled devaluation of the renminbi, in 2016 they will realize that the situation in China is under control and the real problems are elsewhere.

Financial crises erupt when a country has two problems at once: financial weakness and political weakness. China has financial weaknesses, to be sure, in the balance sheets of state-owned enterprises, regional government debt, and the shadow banking system. But there is little reason to question the government’s capacity to intervene if something goes seriously wrong, particularly given the country’s nearly $3.5 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves. These can be used to support the exchange rate if the renminbi shows undue weakness. In an extreme situation, the authorities can resort to direct controls on financial transactions, and they have no reluctance to use them.

The situation is different in other emerging markets like Brazil, South Africa, Thailand, and Turkey. Like China, these countries are financially vulnerable. Their corporations are saddled with large amounts of short-term, dollar-denominated debt which becomes increasingly difficult to service as the dollar strengthens, as it is again likely to do in 2016. In turn, worries about corporate defaults—which damage fiscal accounts either directly by prompting bailouts or indirectly by depressing tax revenues—can cause investors to flee. Since these countries lack the ability to impose controls on financial transactions, the result could be a currency collapse, potentially leading to economic collapse.

To avoid that outcome, a strong government could cut public spending to restore confidence and allow the central bank to raise interest rates in order to attract capital back to the economy. In Brazil, however, President Dilma Rousseff’s government has so far failed to push through the necessary, but painful, fiscal measures. The central bank has hesitated to raise its main interest rate, the Selic, for fear it would erode public support for the administration. Instead, it has relied on unsustainable intervention in the foreign-exchange market.

Every unhappy emerging market is unhappy in its own way. In Turkey, the problem is largely geopolitical uncertainty centered on the conflict in Syria. In Thailand it is urban-rural divisions, the uncertain health of the king, and an even more uncertain succession. In South Africa it is weak commodity prices and labor unrest. But what they all have in common is uncertainty about the capacity of governments to respond.

Economists, it is famously said, have predicted 11 out of the last seven crises. No one can predict with any confidence when the next one will happen. But it is easier to predict where.