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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
An LDC debt update
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.
Working Paper
Gaucho banking redux
Argentina's economic crisis has strong similarities with previous crises stretching back to the nineteenth century. A common thread runs through all these crises: the interaction of a weak, undisciplined, or corruptible banking sector, and some other group of conspirators from the public or private sector that hasten its collapse. This pampean propensity for crony finance was dubbed "gaucho banking" more than one hundred years ago. What happens when such a rotten structure interacts with a convertibility plan? We compare the 1929 and 2001 crises-the two instances where rigid convertibility ...
Working Paper
Argentina's experience with parallel exchange markets: 1981-1990
This paper surveys the development and operation of the parallel exchange market in Argentina during the 1980s, and evaluates its impact upon macroeconomic performance and policy. The historical evolution of Argentina's exchange market policies is reviewed in order to understand the government's motives for imposing exchange controls. The parallel exchange market engendered by these controls is then analyzed, and econometric methods are used to evaluate the behavior of the parallel exchange rate and its impact upon the balance of payments. ; The main conclusion of the paper is that exchange ...
Newsletter
Dollarization in Argentina
Working Paper
Economic growth in Argentina in the period 1900-30: some evidence from stock returns
This paper reports the first stage of a project to recover Argentine stock market data for the entire 20th century. The authors find that real rates of return on Argentine stocks and bonds after 1920 were above those in the Belle poque, and that they were consistent with the view that in the postwar period Argentina remained firmly integrated with international financial markets.
Journal Article
Dollarization in Argentina
Several countries are seriously considering the abandonment of their currency and its formal replacement with the U.S. dollar. Since 1991, Argentina has backed its currency with 100 percent reserves and successfully pegged it to the dollar. In doing so, it has already grappled with many issues that confront would-be adopters of the dollar. Moving to full-fledged dollarization might offer a solution to recurring crises that are partly driven by expectations that Argentina might abandon its peg.
Journal Article
Foreign and domestic bank participation in emerging markets: lessons from Mexico and Argentina
It is generally agreed that strong domestic financial systems play an important role in attaining overall economic development and stabilization. The role played by foreign banks in achieving this goal, however, is still controversial. This article brings new evidence to the debate over foreign participation by examining the lending patterns of domestic and foreign banks in Argentina and Mexico during the 1990s. The authors conclude that foreign banks in both countries typically have stronger and less volatile loan growth than their domestic counterparts. The corollary to this finding, ...
Journal Article
Learning from Argentina's crisis