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Journal Article
Official dollarization and the banking system in Ecuador and El Salvador
In January 2000 Ecuador adopted the U.S. dollar as legal tender, and El Salvador followed suit in 2001. The two countries officially dollarized under quite different circumstances: Ecuador was suffering an economic and banking crisis, while El Salvador enjoyed economic stability and low inflation rates. This article studies the evolution of the banking system in these two countries before and after official, or full, dollarization. ; In Ecuador the reforms that ensued from full dollarization have improved transparency and banking performance and competitiveness, but the implementation and ...
Working Paper
A Nowcasting Model for the Growth Rate of Real GDP of Ecuador : Implementing a Time-Varying Intercept
This paper proposes a model to nowcast the annual growth rate of real GDP for Ecuador. The specification combines monthly information of 28 macroeconomic variables with quarterly information of real GDP in a mixed-frequency approach. Additionally, our setup includes a time-varying mean coefficient on the annual growth rate of real GDP to allow the model to incorporate prolonged periods of low growth, such as those experienced during secular stagnation episodes. The model produces reasonably good nowcasts of real GDP growth in pseudo out-of-sample exercises and is marginally more precise than ...