United States Treasury prices rose, as did the dollar, as investors fled equities for the safety of government-backed debt. The 10-year Treasury note rose 18/32, to 101 14/32, and the yield fell to 3.21 percent, from 3.27 percent late Wednesday.

Image Dubai, in debt from financing a building boom, is seeking to defer payments. Credit... Charles Crowell/Bloomberg News

Markets in Asia were sharply lower on Friday, with the Hang Seng in Hong Kong falling 4.8 percent. European exchanges finished slightly higher.

Some analysts said Friday that the declines were overdone, exaggerated by light trading over a holiday. A truer picture of the markets may not come until next week, analysts said, as buyers return and as more details of the Dubai crisis, and the exposure of banks, emerge.

“Dubai is really a symptom, a legacy, from the previous boom, rather than symptomatic of a start of a whole new set of issues that are going to create a systemic crisis in emerging markets,” Kevin Grice, senior international economist at Capital Economics in London, said. “Markets assume the worst-case scenario.”

Investors on Friday tried to assess just how much damage Dubai’s debt struggle would wreak on the global economy, and a question was how much exposure banks might have. Emerging markets have often seemed more vulnerable because their financial markets are not as deep and sophisticated as those in the West.

While that notion was proved wrong during the financial crisis, investors are still skittish about the developing world’s ability to handle a crisis. They need look no further than Bangkok, where a seemingly contained financial panic spiraled into a regional crisis more than a decade ago.

There is a fear that Dubai’s problems could rattle emerging market banks and financial institutions that have lent the emirate money.