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Journal Article
Implications of the globalization of the banking sector: the Latin American experience
Foreign entry into domestic banking markets remains a contentious issue. Whether privatizing a state bank in Brazil or selling a failed bank in Japan, the proposed sale of a large domestic financial institution, possibly to a foreign acquirer, frequently results in a major controversy. Many Asian countries have yet to experience major foreign penetration of domestic banking markets, while Latin American countries have privatized many of their banks and have encouraged foreign banks to enter their domestic markets. ; Because many Latin American countries opened their markets during the 1990s, ...
Report
On the determinants and resilience of bond flows to LDCs, 1990-1995: evidence from Argentina, Brazil and Mexico
Bond flows to Less Developed Countries (LDCs) proved more resilient than expected to the rising U.S. interest rates during 1994, raising hopes that the current episode of private capital flows to LDCs may not end in a widespread crisis as its predecessors in the 1920s and 1970s did. This paper attributes the surprising resilience of the flows to the fact that global bond issuance was a significant determinant of them, independently of U.S. (and world) interest rates. Briefly, global issuance, which recovered quickly from the shock of the first interest-rate rise in February 1994, helped ...
Working Paper
Export market diversification and productivity improvements: theory and evidence from Argentinean firms
This paper examines the relationship between trade and investment in technology adoption when firms face demand uncertainty. Our model predicts that, for a given overall market size, exporting to several countries reduces firms' demand uncertainty and, hence, raises incentives to invest in productivity improvements. The effects of diversification are heterogeneous across firms: An additional foreign market matters more for firms exporting to fewer destinations. We test the proposed theory using a large sample of Argentinean manufacturing exporters. The predictions of the model find strong ...
Working Paper
Interpreting the Pari Passu Clause in Sovereign Bond Contracts: It's All Hebrew (and Aramaic) to Me
In this comment, we take a helicopter tour of the history of notions of ?equality? and ?justice? in sovereign debt restructuring in particular, and in the division of property more generally, and show that these concerns have existed for centuries, if not millennia. We argue that the issue at stake in the interpretation of the pari passu clause is not so much the treatment of holders of identical claims?it is now customary to treat them identically?but whether the holders of different claims should be treated differently. We show that exists a customary ?principle of differentiation? that ...
Journal Article
Argentina Agonistes
Working Paper
The Tequila effect: theory and evidence from Argentina
The Tequila Effect hypothesis states that the economic crisis that affected several South American countries in 1995 was caused by an exogenous capital flight triggered by the loss of confidence of foreign investors after the collapse of the Mexican peso in December 1994. I analyze the recent Argentine experience before and after the Mexican crisis and argue that the Tequila Effect played an important role in the 1995 crisis. I model the Tequila Effect in an optimizing, small, open economy, as a situation in which agents at time 0 learn that at some random future date foreign investors will ...
Working Paper
Real interest rates during the disinflation process in developing countries
This paper addresses a phenomenon often noted in association with programs aimed at stabilizing high rates of inflation: a rise in the ex post real interest rate following implementation of the disinflation strategy. Such increases have been observed in connection with the stopping of European hyperinflations in the 1920s, as well as during the more recent experiences of disinflation in Argentina and Israel. To better understand this behavior, we develop a very general model of interest rate determination in a small open economy with two goods--traded and non-traded--and three assets--money, ...
Speech
Globalization and the Latin perspective (with reference to Las Meninas)
Remarks at the Central Bank of Argentina, Buenos Aires, April 19, 2006 ; "My business contacts talk and act as if the globalization now under way will bring another decade of intense competition. This hothouse will enable--perhaps even force--businesses to keep productivity growth in the range we have enjoyed since the mid-1990s--hopefully, for many years to come. If labor productivity growth can stay near 3 percent, monetary policy can accommodate relatively faster growth without igniting inflation."