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This article provides aggregate data on credit flows in Santafé de Bogotá, the capital of the Viceroyalty of New Granada (present-day Colombia, Ecuador and western Venezuela). By perusing a thorough report submitted to Bourbon authorities on notarial transactions, which included both ecclesiastical and non-ecclesiastical loans in the city, the article estimates the volume and size of lending activity while exploring how distinct types of credit interacted and shaped the business milieu of the region. It argues that by the late 1770s, Catholic Church lending had ceased to be the main source of investable funds in the region, with merchants and other non-ecclesiastical investors injecting growing funds into sectors traditionally avoided by ecclesiastical lenders such as commerce, mining and manufacturing. Network analysis suggests that merchants became brokers between different credit sources, alleviating information asymmetries and opening the credit market to borrowers with collateral and institutional restrictions willing to pay higher interest rates. Finally, by focusing on New Granada, the largest gold producer of the Spanish Empire, the article identifies some distinctive credit patterns that are different from those developed in silver-driven economies such as New Spain and Peru. Thus, the article provides new paths to study Latin American financial history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between June 1959 and March 1964, the democratic governments of Brazilian presidents Juscelino Kubitschek (January 1956 – January 1961), Janio Quadros (January–August 1961), Ranieri Mazzilli (August–September 1961) and João 'Jango' Goulart (September 1961 – April 1964) received no support from the World Bank (WB), which refused to fund even a single new project during this period. During this same period, and, more specifically, between July 1958 and January 1965, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the WB's twin institution, granted financial assistance to Brazil only twice: a controversial and highly conditional Stand-By Arrangement (SBA) signed in May 1961; and a non-conditional and automatically approved Compensatory Financial Facility (CFF), granted in May 1963 to compensate Brazil for the decrease in coffee prices on the international market. This attitude towards Brazil changed significantly following the military coup of March 1964. Money flowed into the country and by 1970 Brazil had become the largest receiver of WB funds and a chronic borrower from the IMF, signing two SBAs in 1965, and one per year between 1966 and 1972. We use recently disclosed material from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank archives to analyse the relationship of these two institutions with Brazil and to foster the debate on their political neutrality, arguing that the difference in the IMF's and especially the WB's relations with the military regime reflected, more than anything else, the existence of an ideological affinity between the parties with regards to the 'right' economic policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shortcomings and potential dangers of international financial flows for the health and stability of domestic banking systems in developing countries have been copiously discussed over the last decades. While the importance of capital controls and regulation as determining factors has been widely emphasised, the extent to which these policies work in episodes of financial crisis is still a matter of debate. This article examines the relationship between supervisory frameworks and banking fragility in Mexico and Brazil in the wake of the international debt crisis of 1982. It shows that the model of international banking intermediation that evolved out of the stringent capital mobility system in Brazil was considerably less vulnerable to crisis than in Mexico, which had a more lightly regulated regime. These findings provide insights into historical debates about the implications of prudential regulation and capital controls for the development and expansion of foreign finance, and whether the risks underlying international banking are necessarily inherent in the process of financial globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use new firm-level data from Chile to document resource misallocation in favor of politically connected firms during the transition from dictatorship to democracy. We find that firms with links to the Pinochet regime (1973–1990) were relatively unproductive and benefited from resource misallocation under dictatorship, and those distortions persisted into democracy. We show that, after learning that the dictatorship was going to end, firms in the dictator's network increased their productive capacity, experienced higher profits, and obtained more loans from the main state-owned bank. We test for different explanations and provide suggestive evidence consistent with connected firms aiming to shield their market position for the transition to democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian & Latin American Economic History is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines how businesses perceived political risk in South Asia and Latin America over the last half century. Employing data from an oral history database at Harvard Business School, the article identifies five major sources of political risk: macroeconomic and policy turbulence, excessive bureaucracy, political instability, corruption, and violence. Marked regional differences were identified in perceptions and responses to risks. Macroeconomic and policy turbulence was the biggest perceived source of risk in Latin America. Excessive bureaucracy was the biggest source of perceived risk in South Asia. South Asian businesses often avoided bureaucracies, while Latin Americans worked with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian & Latin American Economic History is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The international banking crisis that began in 2007 has brought the relationship between international banking activities and financial crises to the forefront. The growing reliance on foreign interbank funding by domestic banks has been recognized as a crucial factor in explaining the banking and sovereign debt crisis currently affecting several peripheral European countries. This article shows that the link between financial crisis and international interbank lending is not a new phenomenon; a similar trend can be observed in the Mexican banking sector during the run-up to its 1982 debt crisis. I explore the international activities of Mexican commercial banks in the years preceding the country's default and demonstrate that they became involved in international lending which was funded largely through heavy short-term interbank foreign borrowing. I provide new archival evidence which shows that in intermediating foreign finance with local public and private borrowers, Mexican banks incurred maturity, interest rate and currency mismatches and dangerously increased their risk position. This article provides insights for understanding the Mexican debt crisis as closely intertwined with problems in the domestic banking sector, which were, in turn, linked to its involvement in the international financial system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the interlocking directorates' structure of prominent Argentine business groups at the end of the import substitution period (1970-72), identifying corporate relations among and between business groups and the largest companies, during a period characterised by high institutional and macroeconomic instability. Applying social network analysis, it seeks to clarify how business groups can contribute to the cohesion of a corporate network structure, through their ability to create links among firms not only within their boundaries but also external to them. The article contributes to both corporate network and business groups' literature, highlighting a role of business groups that extant literature has failed to identify as relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the evolution, strategies, and position of the American & Foreign Power company ( AFP) in Argentina and Brazil from the mid-1920s to the second post-war period. We compare the economic performance and the strategies followed by this US group in different host economies, examining the relations between the US electricity firms and the governments of both countries that explain American & Foreign Power's withdrawal from Argentina and Brazil in 1959-65. The study is based upon the annual reports and proceedings of American & Foreign Power (1923-63) and other corporate reports, government statistics, and official reports from Argentina, Brazil, and the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Business history in Latin America has seen significant growth in the past 25 years, most notably since the beginning of this century. Although the sub-discipline benefitted from seminal studies by British and U. S. scholars, most works of note are currently produced by local scholars. Latin American business history holds great comparative potential for business historians in other parts of the world undertaking studies in the areas of emerging economies, business-state relationships, the role of entrepreneurship, business groups, entrepreneurial families, and foreign investment and imperialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]