Search Results
Journal Article
Argentina, Mexico, and currency boards: another case of rules versus discretion
This article discusses currency boards in light of the recent economic experiences of Mexico and Argentina. Carlos Zarazaga argues that currency boards do not solve the important time inconsistency problem pointed out in the rules-versus-discretion literature. Because of this failure, even the quasi-currency board established by law (the so-called convertibility law) did not protect Argentina from one of its most severe financial crises in modern times. ; In addition, there is the normative issue of whether an ironclad rule such as a currency board rule is superior to a noncontingent one. ...
Working Paper
Banking and finance in Argentina in the period 1900–35
From 1900 to 1935, Argentina evolved from an economy highly dependent on external, primarily British, finance to one more nearly self-sufficient. We examine the failure of domestic finance to adequately fill the void left by the decline of London and the breakdown of the world financial system in the interwar period, when neither the Buenos Aires Bolsa nor the private domestic banks developed rapidly enough to fully replace British investors as efficient channels for financing private investment. One consequence is that Argentine investable funds were increasingly concentrated in a single ...
Working Paper
Argentina's recovery and \"excess\" capital shallowing of the 1990s
The paper examines Argentina?s economic expansion in the 1990s through the lens of a parsimonious neoclassical growth model. The main finding is that investment remained considerably weaker than what the model would have predicted. The resulting excessive ?capital shallowing? could be identified as a weakness of the rapid economic growth of the 1990s that may have played a role in Argentina?s ultimate inability to escape the crisis that started to unfold towards the end of that decade.
Journal Article
Measuring the benefits of unilateral trade liberalization; part 2: dynamic models
This is the second of two articles examining the potential welfare gains or losses from a unilateral move toward free trade. Part 1 concluded that applied static models of international trade fail to produce eye-popping positive welfare effects. In Part 2, Carlos Zarazaga reviews available applied dynamic general equilibrium models. He finds that the promises of larger welfare gains from unilateral trade liberalization do materialize in some dynamic models. However, other models cannot completely dismiss some common objections to the adoption of unilateral free trade policies. Zarazaga ...
Working Paper
Argentina’s “Missing Capital” Puzzle and Limited Commitment Constraints
Capital accumulation in Argentina was slow in the 1990s, despite high total factor productivity (TFP) growth and low international interest rates. A possible explanation for the ?missing capital? is that foreign investors were reluctant to take advantage of the high returns to investment seemingly offered by that small open economy under such favorable conditions, on the grounds that previous historical developments had led them to perceive Argentina as a country prone to external debt ?opportunistic defaults.? The paper examines this conjecture from the perspective of an optimal contract ...
Journal Article
Beyond the border: Latin American market reforms put to the test
Journal Article
A balanced-growth view of men's and women's unbalanced labor market recoveries
Correctly gauging the output gap is particularly difficult because an economy?s potential output is not directly observable.
Journal Article
Is the business cycle of Argentina "different?"
Despite the relative success of Real Business Cycle (RBC) models to replicate key moments of the business cycles of the United States and several European countries, economic research in Latin America tends to take the more traditional view that monetary factors play a predominant role in the economic fluctuations of countries in that part of the world. The different theoretical approach is often justified on the grounds that business cycles in Latin America are "different." However, few comparative studies have analyzed the relevant difference between the business cycles of Latin America ...