Developing resilience to contagion effects from global financial crises and economic recessions has been an ongoing crucial task for policymakers in emerging market economies. The recent global financial crisis of 2007-2009 has underscored the importance of pursuing disciplined macroeconomic policies and of devising sound macroprudential regulations that would strengthen the immunity of emerging markets and their institutions to various types of risks, including credit, default, sovereign, liquidity and market risks. The studies included in this symposium are not intended to provide a comprehensive overview of financial vulnerabilities in a broad spectrum of emerging markets. Rather, they share a common aim of examining susceptibility of selected markets and institutions to various types of financial risk. In addition, they examine the transmission of risks from mature to emerging markets, as well as sovereign risk problems in emerging market economies and the contagion effects of financial crises. The papers analyze timely issues that have not been researched exhaustively in the literature, and thus remain subject to ongoing scholarly projects and debates, most of which stem directly from the economic quandaries that have arisen out of the recent global crisis.