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Este estudio evalúa la asignación de los préstamos bancarios entre industrias en Haití en el período 200-2015 y produce evidencia que confirma lo siguiente: (1) Las participaciones de cada industria en el total de crédito son relativamente rígidas, a pesar de las cambiantes condiciones sectoriales y de precios relativos; (2) Consistente con lo anterior, los ejercicios econométricos demuestran que estas participaciones no están gobernadas por el desempeño reciente del sector, creando dudas sobre la eficiencia de esas carteras de préstamos; y (3) Como resultado de intensas restricciones financieras, la expansión del crédito aparece como un motor significativo del crecimiento sectorial. Del análisis emergen diversas recomendaciones de política., This study assesses the allocation of bank loans across industries in Haiti over the period 2000-2015 and produces fresh evidence supporting the following claims: (1) Credit shares by industry appear to be sticky over time in spite of changing industry-specific conditions and sharp relative price changes; (2) Consistent with the previous finding, econometric exercises confirm that loan portfolio allocations are not governed by recent sector performance, casting doubts about the efficiency of loan portfolios; (3) As a result of intense financial constraints, credit expansion seems to be a major driver of industry growth. Several policy recommendations emerge from the study., Facultad de Ciencias Económicas

Our paper sets up a simple model to assess, for the first time, the relative pros and cons of housing downpayment (DS) and interest rate (IRS) subsidies on the access to and the stability of the mortgage market. Our analysis unveils a number of relevant policy lessons for the design of housing subsidy programs, among them: (a) For fiscal neutrality (same government outlay) to hold, the percentage IRS must be larger than the DS; (b) The IRS raises the loan size a bank is willing to grant, but the DS; (c) When targeting lower income households, the DS is superior to the interest rate subsidy; (d) The DS may increase the probability of default due to this focalization, while the IRS may have the same effect via the increased borrower leverage; and (e) Compared to the IRS, the DS promotes a less aggressive competition in the real estate market., Nuestro trabajo construye un modelo simple para evaluar, por primera vez, los pros y contras relativos de los subsidios estatales al pago inicial (DS) y a la tasa de interés (IRS) sobre el acceso y la estabilidad del mercado hipotecario. El análisis revela varias lecciones de política relevantes para el diseño de estos programas, entre ellas: (a) Para generar neutralidad fiscal (igual gasto público), el IRS debe ser mucho más amplio que el DS en términos porcentuales; (b) A diferencia del DS, el IRS aumenta el tamaño del préstamo que el banco está dispuesto a conceder; (c) El DS es superior al IRS a la hora de focalizar en las familias de menores ingresos; (d) El DS puede elevar la probabilidad de default debido a esa focalización, mientras que el IRS puede elevarla debido al mayor apalancamiento del deudor; y (e) Comparado con el IRS, el DS promueve una competencia menos agresiva en el mercado inmobiliario., Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas

Working on a unbalanced sample of OECD countries spanning the period 1970-2003, this paper contributes to the empirical literature on the Feldstein-Horioka puzzle by making three main innovations: First, it goes beyond the traditional national-level investment-saving equations to estimate, for the first time, regressions at the institutional sector level (households, corporations, and government). Second, it explores the implications of giving separate consideration to current account deficits and surpluses. Lastly, it uses advanced panel data techniques to deal with endogeneity and to distinguish long- and short-run effects. After discarding the influence of common factors, the conclusions are that: (i) The national Feldstein-Horioka coefficient is in the vicinity of 0.5, but sectoral coefficients are much lower and even insignificantly different from zero; (ii) Such positive and significant national coefficient would not reflect frictions in international credit markets but just a fiscal current account targeting policy; (iii) Nevertheless, when the sample is split into deficit and surplus years, a higher and significant correlation emerges for the former at the national, household, and corporate level, implying that credit imperfections still play a role for the private but not for the public sector. Equally noteworthy, household correlation is still positive and significant, yet lower, for surplus years; and (iv) Against the background of a unitary long-run coefficient to satisfy the intertemporal budget constraint, the long-run relationship is 0.75 for national data, 0.6 for the corporate sector, and marginally or non-significant at the household and government level.

This study centers on the household saving rate in Latin America by constructing a new database from 27 household surveys in 10 countries. At the statistical level, about half of the households present negative saving. This fact, coupled with the discrepancy with national accounts data, suggests some degree of income underreporting and/or consumption overreporting. The estimations highlight the overriding positive role of income in shaping saving decisions. Many other controls prove to be significant as well. In terms of household saving promotion, our paper leaves little room for optimism., Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS)

This paper revisits the role of business saving in the economy by critically scrutinizing the existing macroeoconomic and corporate finance literatures. We assemble and exploit a broad international, unbalanced panel of 47 countries over 1995-2013 on saving and investment by institutional sector to shed new light on the relevance of business saving for private saving and investment around the world. We show that businesses contribute on average more than 50% of national saving around the world. Using this unique dataset, we find evidence of partial piercing of the corporate veil: a $1 increase in business saving gives rise to a decrease of approximately $0.40 in household saving–thereby raising private saving by as much as $0.60. We also find that a $1 increase in business saving increases private investment by as much as $0.20 in countries where limited financing is a binding constraint on firms’ invesment. The evidence suggests that business saving and external financing are complementary sources of financing for investment., Departamento de Economía

This study centers on the household saving rate in Latin America by constructing a new database from 27 household surveys in 10 countries. At the statistical level, about half of the households present negative saving. This fact, coupled with the discrepancy with national accounts data, suggests some degree of income underreporting and/or consumption overreporting. The estimations highlight the overriding positive role of income in shaping saving decisions. Many other controls prove to be significant as well. In terms of household saving promotion, our paper leaves little room for optimism.

This paper investigates the relevance of business saving for private saving and investment around the world by constructing and exploiting a broad international, unbalanced panel of 64 countries over 1990-2012. The paper shows that businesses are the main contributors to private and national saving around the globe, contributing on average more than 50 percent of national saving. Using this unique dataset, evidence is found of partial piercing of the corporate veil: for the core estimation, it is found find that a $1 increase in business saving gives rise to a decrease of only $0. 28 in household saving. The non-neutrality of business saving is further confirmed by results showing that higher business saving is significantly associated with higher business investment. In conjuction with the empirical results, this paper sheds new light on the role of business saving in the economy by critically scrutinizing the existing macroeoconomic and corporate finance literatures.

Our paper sets up a simple model to assess, to the best of our knowledge for the first time, the relative pros and cons of housing downpayment and interest rate subsidies on the access to and the stability of the mortgage market. Our analysis unveils a number of relevant policy lessons for the design of housing subsidy programs, namely: (a) Under fiscal neutrality (same government outlay), both subsidies have the same positive effect on the ability and willingness to repay. But, for such neutrality to hold, the percentage interest rate subsidy must be larger than the downpayment subsidy, which is rare to happen in practice; (b) The interest rate subsidy raises the loan size a bank is willing to grant, but the downpayment subsidy does not, the reason being that the latter actually diminishes the need for bank financing for a given property value; (c) When targeting lower income households, the downpayment subsidy is superior to the interest rate subsidy, as the former increases the loan-to-value and debt-to-income ratios, two key criteria for mortgage borrower eligibility. By the same token, the downpayment subsidy is more likely to have a stronger effect on low and medium value housing units; (d) Such progressivity comes at the cost of a higher probability of default, meaning that some trade-off between equity and financial stability may emerge; (e) Subsidies are likely to put upward pressure on housing prices. The downpayment subsidy has a direct effect (by injecting fiscal resources to cover part of the property price) and an indirect effect (by easing the access to the mortgage market); (f) The interest rate subsidy only has the latter effect; and (g) Compared to the interest rate subsidy, the downpayment support promotes a less aggressive competition in the real estate market.

Ricardo Bebczuk es profesor titular de Política Económica II en la Facultad de Ciencias Económicas de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata y profesor en la Maestría en Economía de esa misma casa de estudios. Ha sido profesor visitante en distintas universidades del país y del extranjero y realiza estudios y consultorías para organismos nacionales e internacionales. Es Licenciado en Economía (FCE-UNLP), Magister en Disciplinas Bancarias (UNLP-Universidad de Siena, Italia) y Master of Arts y Ph.D. in Economics (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). Ha publicado más de 60 artículos académicos a nivel internacional. Entre sus 11 libros, es autor de Asymetric information in financial markets: Introduction and applications, Cambridge University Press, Reino Unido, y Para entender la economía: 12 preguntas esenciales. Editorial Galerna, Buenos Aires. (Párrafo extraído del texto a modo de resumen), Facultad de Ciencias Económicas

When it comes to measure the sources of growth and draw economic policy conclusions, economists rely on growth accounting. According to this approach, per capita growth is explained by two sources: capital accumulation and total factor productivity. Our contention is that growth accounting suffers from serious pitfalls once we take into account that: (i) Total factor productivity and investment are not independent of each other, and (ii) Total factor productivity is badly measured. The result is that the sources of growth are directly unob-servable, undermining any conclusion based on available measures. To partially overcome these problems, we introduce a technique especially designed to deal with unobservable, or latent variables, called confirmatory factor analysis. We examine both the relationship between fourteen variables correlated to the growth rate and two latent variables: the “savings channel” and the “productivity channel”, and the correlation between the latter., En el intento de medir las fuentes del crecimiento económico y diseñar conclusiones de política económica, los economistas confían en la contabilidad del crecimiento. Según este acercamiento, el crecimiento per cápita de la economía se explica a través de dos fuentes: la acumulación de capital y los factores totales de productividad. Sin embargo, si se considera que la contabilidad del crecimiento padece de serias anomalías una vez que: (i) la productividad total de factores y la inversión no son independientes entre sí y (ii) la productividad total de factores no es medida adecuadamente. El resultado es que las fuentes reales de crecimiento son directamente inobservables e invalidan cualquier conclusión de política económica basada en las medidas disponibles. Con el objeto de superar parcialmente estos problemas, este documento introduce una técnica diseñada para tratar variables inobservables o latentes. La técnica examina la relación entre catorce variables puestas en correlación con la tasa de crecimiento y dos variables latentes: el “canal de ahorro” y el “canal de productividad”.

The goal of this paper is to study the link between bank credit (and internal funding) and average firm size in Argentina. Besides the fact that economic growth tends to go hand in hand with larger firm size, the topic is of particular interest because of the severe credit crunch in Argentina in the aftermath of the 2001-2002 financial crisis. To this end, a novel three-digit industry-level dataset spanning the 2000-2010 period was constructed. The results confirm the expected positive impact of credit supply on average firm size. Furthermore, the study expands on common knowledge by testing the sensitivity of firm size to internal funding and the differential financing behavior of the primary and the manufacturing sector. The results do not seem to be driven by endogeneity bias.

There exists a widespread perception that Argentine households channel a large share of their savings into real state. However, no hard evidence has produced to date to measure how important this saving behavior is for the determination of housing prices vis-à-vis the traditional housing motive to buy property. In this light, this paper assesses for the first time whether housing prices in Argentina are mostly driven by housing or by investment motives. To this end, we devised a simple empirical test taking the form of an Equilibrium Correction model of apartment prices in Buenos Aires City on four explanatory variables that separately capture the housing motive (affordability and mortgage loans) and the investment motive (private bank deposits and income). It is found that private bank deposits and income have strong long and short run effects on housing prices behavior. Affordability only shows a short run effect, while mortgage loans turn out to be non-significant. These findings suggest, in line with the popular view on this topic, that real state fulfills a prominent role as a financial investment in Argentina., Departamento de Economía

This paper analyzes mortgage loan demand in Argentina using a new survey administered in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area. It is found that recurring macro volatility and violation of financial property rights have increased demand for real estate as an investment, which in turn raises house prices and makes it more difficult for consumer households to meet minimum income requirements for obtaining a mortgage. Affordability thus seems to offer a better explanation than standard supply side constraints for the small size of the mortgage market in Argentina. Overall, the findings suggest that the shallow mortgage market has not posed a major impediment to home ownership rate in Argentina and that the small (and shrinking) mortgage market has more to do with lack of demand than credit supply constraint., Departamento de Economía

The purpose of this paper is to assess whether the banking system, over and beyond its credit function, has a significant impact on per capita GDP by providing means of payment. An annual database of 85 countries spanning the 1980-2008 period is exploited to this end. On the descriptive front, we find that richer economies exhibit higher and increasing levels of demand deposits and lower levels of currency than poor countries. While this was to be expected, more surprising is the fact that the currency to GDP ratio did not decrease much over time, regardless of income level differences. In turn, our regressions confidently support the hypothesis that banks contribute to economic development not only as credit suppliers but also by facilitating transactions. Specifically, along with the ratio of private credit to GDP, the ratio of demand deposits to currency seems to exert a positive influence on per capita GDP. The results are robust for different model specifications. These findings have valuable implications for a better understanding of the channels through which the banking system affects the economy.

Driven by the financial distress of many social security systems worldwide, national public pension funds (PPFs) have proliferated in recent years. Considering the fact that in 2007, they managed assets globally by more than four trillion and a half dollars, oversight of these pension schemes is utterly warranted. Since PPFs are ultimately financial intermediaries, strict regulation and close scrutiny of their stakeholders is desirable in order to avoid potential conflicts of interest between the owners and the managers of the funds, which are exacerbated in the case of pension funds administered by the public sector because of many reasons discussed in the paper. Governance standards should be equally rigorous as those applicable to private pension funds. Additionally, sound institutional structure is needed to keep under control undue political interference by promoting good practices of disclosure and accountability. According to several case studies, at present, national PPFs display heterogeneous standards in this regard. In light of their size and intrinsic governance shortcomings, there exists a pressing need for Guidelines of Good Practices for Public Pension Funds Governance that lays the grounds on which these particular institutional investors should be run to achieve their stated purposes. The current document provides Guidelines proposing as key areas of a PPF the maximization of the risk-adjusted net return on the reserves, collections of contributions, payments of benefits, compliance enforcement, and account management. In turn, an environment conducive to the accomplishment of these objectives must be grounded on three pillars: (i) Internal Governance Structure: a good internal governance structure is one that ensures that the Fund will be administered by a committed and professional governing body where decisions are made after careful deliberation and agreement between its members in accordance to the Fund’s objectives and fully consistent with the long-term commitments made to plan members; (ii) Investment Policy: a good investment policy is one that clearly and explicitly sets forth in advance the short- and long-term asset allocation, its rationale in light of the Fund’s goal, the risks involved, and the tools to be used to deal with deviations from such goal; and (iii) Transparency and Accountability: it is crucial that relevant and timely information be disclosed to all stakeholders so as to facilitate monitoring and oversight of Fund authorities and actions be taken to detect and punish opportunistic behaviors and bad performance. After listing the principles recommended for a good framework of governance, accountability and transparency, the document develops a Manual that complements the Guidelines with its technical rationale, some operational aspects and international experience as applicable., Departamento de Economía

The goal of this paper is to provide up-to-date worldwide evidence on the short-term relationship between credit changes and output changes. Standard correlation methods, stateof-the-art panel Granger causality tests, and panel regressions were applied on a maximum sample of 144 countries over the period 1990-2007. Our results openly clash with two popular economic statements, namely, that credit is procyclical and that changes in credit have strong effects on private expenditure. According to the evidence produced, credit procyclicality -in the sense that the simple correlation coefficient is positive and significant at 10% or less- prevails in just 45% of the countries when annual data are used (23% with quarterly data). As for time precedence, our work suggests that, for the full sample, Granger causality runs from GDP to credit, while the often claimed causality from credit to GDP is a feature observable much less frequently - this behavior is observed only in financially developed countries. Results are robust to random resampling. Furthermore, after considering the potential presence of endogeneity, we contend that our results uncover not just mere Granger causality but economic causality. All in all, these findings have vast academic and policy implications.

Using a quarterly dataset of 185 listed firms in six Latin American countries between 1993 and 2009 we find that leverage is positively related to tangibility, firm size and the market to book ratio, and negatively related to profitability. The average cost of debt is negatively related with size, tangibility, firm growth, the leverage ratio, and the ratio of long-to short-term debt and positively to profitability. We find that the recent international crisis did not have a significant impact on the set of firms in our sample, but affected the way in which leverage and the interest to debt ratio relate to firm fundamentals. In particular we find that the links between leverage, tangibility and profitability were strengthened, and that financial constraints were not increased during the crisis.The evidence is consistent with a flight-to-quality phenomenon in favor of big, listed firms., Departamento de Economía

Working on a sample of OECD countries spanning the period 1970-2003, this paper contributes to the Feldstein-Horioka literature by making three main innovations: (1) It estimates, for the first time, regressions at the institutional sector level (households, corporations, and government); (2) It explores the asymmetry between current account deficits and surpluses; and (3) It uses advanced panel data techniques to deal with endogeneity and to distinguish long- and short-run effects. The conclusions of the paper are that: (i) The national Feldstein-Horioka coefficient is in the vicinity of 0.5, but sectoral coefficients are much lower, a puzzling result possibly explained by endogenous intersectoral saving and investment links; (iii) The FH coefficients are higher in deficit than in surplus years; and (iv) The long-run relationship is in all cases below 1, which raises the question as to whether the intertemporal budget constraint should be interpreted., A partir de una muestra de países de la OECD que abarca el período 1970-2003, este trabajo contribuye a la literatura sobre Feldstein-Horioka haciendo tres innovaciones principales: (1) Estima, por primera vez, regresiones a nivel de sectores institucionales (hogares, empresas y gobierno); (2) Explora la asimetría entre los déficits y superávits de cuenta corriente; y (3) Usa técnicas avanzadas para paneles de datos para trabajar con endogeneidad y distinguir efectos de largo y de corto plazo. Las conclusiones del trabajo son: (i) El coeficiente nacional de Feldstein - Horioka se encuentra próximo a 0.5, pero los coeficientes sectoriales son mucho más bajos, un resultado desconcertante posiblemente explicado por la relación intersectorial endógena entre ahorro e inversión; (ii) Los coeficientes FH son mayores en años de déficits que en años de superávits; y (iii) La relación de largo plazo es, en todos los casos, menor a 1, lo cual plantea la pregunta acerca de cómo debería interpretarse la restricción presupuestaria intertemporal., Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas

This paper assesses the impact of the Liquidity Program for Growth Sustainability (LPGS) on Latin America and the Caribbean, instrumented by the IDB to confront the regional spillovers of the subprime crisis. This emergency liquidity line was set up to boost productive loans of commercial banks, channeled through a second-tier scheme. The empirical strategy revolves around GARCH models to test whether the public announcement of negotiations and of loan approval have had any impact on high frequency macroeconomic data, such as the country risk premium and the interbank interest rate. Our evidence reveals a positive and significant effect on financial stability attributable to LPGS in Jamaica, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic and Panama. We additionally discuss the rationale of key LPGS’ design features and the observed outcomes., Departamento de Economía

El presente documento analiza el grado de acceso al crédito por parte de las pequeñas y medianas empresas en Argentina. A tal efecto, el estudio revisa críticamente diversos preconceptos de amplia difusión entre los encargados de política e incluso entre especialistas en el tema. En particular, se cuestiona el real alcance de la demanda insatisfecha de crédito y el proceso de selección de deudores y la transparencia de los programas públicos. A partir de este diagnóstico, fundamentado en argumentos teóricos y en distintas fuentes de evidencia para Argentina y otros países, se brindan recomendaciones prácticas para el diseño de políticas públicas orientadas a mejorar la inserción de las pymes en el mercado crediticio.

The paper investigates the effect of remittances on the coverage of financial deficits arising during youth and retirement years and their influence on some household behaviors. To this end, household survey information is used from Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua to perform a number of econometric tests exploring the linkage between remittances and a battery of health, education and work outcomes dealing with young and elderly household members. The main overall finding is that, with variations across countries and regression specifications, remittances generally appear to exert a positive and robust impact. In particular, with few exceptions, remittances (a) respond to the lack of pensions and especially to overall household financial deficits; (b) encourage co-residence of the elderly with younger relatives; (c) facilitate elderly’s retirement; (d) increase household expenditures in health and education; (e) foster public and private school attendance, inhibits child labor, and improve anthropometric measures.

The paper investigates the effect of remittances on the coverage of financial deficits arising during youth and retirement years and their influence on some household behaviors. To this end, household survey information is used from Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua to perform a number of econometric tests exploring the linkage between remittances and a battery of health, education and work outcomes dealing with young and elderly household members. The main overall finding is that, with variations across countries and regression specifications, remittances generally appear to exert a positive and robust impact. In particular, with few exceptions, remittances (a) respond to the lack of pensions and especially to overall household financial deficits; (b) encourage co-residence of the elderly with younger relatives; (c) facilitate elderly's retirement; (d) increase household expenditures in health and education; (e) foster public and private school attendance, inhibits child labor, and improve anthropometric measures., Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS)

El presente documento analiza el grado de acceso al crédito por parte de las pequeñas y medianas empresas en Argentina. A tal efecto, el estudio revisa críticamente diversos preconceptos de amplia difusión entre los encargados de política e incluso entre especialistas en el tema. En particular, se cuestiona el real alcance de la demanda insatisfecha de crédito y el proceso de selección de deudores y la transparencia de los programas públicos. A partir de este diagnóstico, fundamentado en argumentos teóricos y en distintas fuentes de evidencia para Argentina y otros países, se brindan recomendaciones prácticas para el diseño de políticas públicas orientadas a mejorar la inserción de las pymes en el mercado crediticio., Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS)

Until the eruption of the 2007-2008 international crisis, the decade was characterized by a high growth of credit - especially credit lines for consumption - and of GDP in a large part of the developed and developing worlds. By the end of the period, the process coincided with increasing inflationary pressures in several countries, which might suggest a potential relationship between credit for consumption and inflation. To give an answer to this question, we have performed an econometric analysis using information on 30 countries, both developed and developing, for the period 1995-2007. Our findings reject this hypothesis unequivocally since they provide no evidence whatsoever of a relationship between these two variables. Our interpretation of this first evidence is that the absence of the anticipated effect may result from the scarce weight of credit on the private sector’s spending.

Our study critically surveys financial inclusion in Latin American and Caribbean countries, gauging access to both credit and deposit accounts by poor households. Our review confirms some pieces of conventional wisdom in this area, but challenges some others. Regarding the latter, we claim that (a) Limited financial inclusion does not simply follows from unfair discrimination against the poor, but to a great deal from a low demand for financial services and scarce access for the population at large. In this sense, we argue that supply-side constraints have a second-order importance; (b) Despite the impressive progress of microfinance in recent years, stakeholders should avoid overoptimism, rooted in an apparent over-advertisement of a few successful cases. While a potentially powerful tool to fight poverty, microcredit must be carefully targeted, and granted by highly specialized intermediaries under commercially-oriented criteria; (c) Although financial inclusion is a social matter, the private sector has provided more and better responses than the public sector. Furthermore, these private programs have proven to be quite profitable; (d) Recent experiences in several LAC countries hint that governments can play a decisive role in coordinating financial inclusion initiatives, leading normative changes, and supporting innovative banking outreach strategies without engaging directly in credit allocation; and (e) Governments, donors and intermediaries should make coordinated efforts to assemble microdata and encourage sound impact evaluations comparable across countries and time. A number of policy recommendations emerge from the analysis., Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS)

Our study critically surveys financial inclusion in Latin American and Caribbean countries, gauging access to both credit and deposit accounts by poor households. Our review confirms some pieces of conventional wisdom in this area, but challenges some others. Regarding the latter, we claim that (a) Limited financial inclusion does not simply follows from unfair discrimination against the poor, but to a great deal from a low demand for financial services and scarce access for the population at large. In this sense, we argue that supply-side constraints have a second-order importance; (b) Despite the impressive progress of microfinance in recent years, stakeholders should avoid overoptimism, rooted in an apparent over-advertisement of a few successful cases. While a potentially powerful tool to fight poverty, microcredit must be carefully targeted, and granted by highly specialized intermediaries under commercially-oriented criteria; (c) Although financial inclusion is a social matter, the private sector has provided more and better responses than the public sector. Furthermore, these private programs have proven to be quite profitable; (d) Recent experiences in several LAC countries hint that governments can play a decisive role in coordinating financial inclusion initiatives, leading normative changes, and supporting innovative banking outreach strategies without engaging directly in credit allocation; and (e) Governments, donors and intermediaries should make coordinated efforts to assemble microdata and encourage sound impact evaluations comparable across countries and time. A number of policy recommendations emerge from the analysis.

This paper analyzes the relationship between the quality of the commercial credit portfolio and diversification in the financial entities of Argentina during the period 1998-2006. To this effect, a database of the financial sector (banking and non-banking) is used, which allows to consider three potential dimensions of diversification: per productive sector, per province and per client. In addition to characterizing the financial entities’ diversification decisions during the period under analysis, which includes the severe economic and financial crisis of late 2001, the paper analyzes the determinants of the portfolio’s quality including the effect of diversification in the three dimensions stated above. The results indicate that, by controlling for the relevant variables, specialization improves the quality of the credit portfolio.

El presente estudio cuantifica el efecto directo de la dolarización sobre la pobreza en Ecuador. Para ello, en base a información de la Encuesta de Condiciones de Vida para 1999 y 2005/6, se corren microsimulaciones para evaluar cuatro canales directos de transmisión entre dolarización y pobreza, a saber: (1) el cambio en la estructura de empleo y salarios a favor de bienes no transables, atribuible a la apreciación del tipo de cambio real; (2) el cambio de la estructura de gasto de los hogares a favor de bienes transables, por idéntico motivo; (3) la pérdida de poder adquisitivo de las remesas del exterior; y (4) la expansión del crédito de la mano de la estabilidad y crecimiento post-dolarización. La dolarización parece haber tenido un significativo efecto reductor de la pobreza, explicando entre el 22% (pobreza moderada) y el 31% (pobreza extrema) de la caída total observada en el headcount. Para el caso de la brecha, estos valores ascienden a 27% y 40%. La mayor incidencia la ha tenido el abaratamiento de los bienes transables en la canasta de consumo (responsable del 64% del efecto total) y la reasignación laboral hacia el sector no transable (32% del efecto total). Tanto el efecto positivo del crédito como el negativo de las remesas resultaron relativamente bajos. Por otra parte, regresiones logit revelan que la probabilidad de ser pobre fue 10 puntos porcentuales inferior en 2005/6 respecto a 1999, sugiriendo que los factores macroeconómicos han jugado un papel significativo en la reducción observada de los niveles de pobreza. Si bien el veredicto sobre la dolarización resulta positivo en términos de pobreza, es indudable que reducciones adicionales requerirán el logro de altas tasas de crecimiento a nivel agregado que beneficien a los sectores de menores ingresos., Trabajo realizado para el Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID)., Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS)

El presente estudio cuantifica el efecto directo de la dolarización sobre la pobreza en Ecuador. Para ello, en base a información de la Encuesta de Condiciones de Vida para 1999 y 2005/6, se corren microsimulaciones para evaluar cuatro canales directos de transmisión entre dolarización y pobreza, a saber: (1) el cambio en la estructura de empleo y salarios a favor de bienes no transables, atribuible a la apreciación del tipo de cambio real; (2) el cambio de la estructura de gasto de los hogares a favor de bienes transables, por idéntico motivo; (3) la pérdida de poder adquisitivo de las remesas del exterior; y (4) la expansión del crédito de la mano de la estabilidad y crecimiento post-dolarización. La dolarización parece haber tenido un significativo efecto reductor de la pobreza, explicando entre el 22% (pobreza moderada) y el 31% (pobreza extrema) de la caída total observada en el headcount. Para el caso de la brecha, estos valores ascienden a 27% y 40%. La mayor incidencia la ha tenido el abaratamiento de los bienes transables en la canasta de consumo (responsable del 64% del efecto total) y la reasignación laboral hacia el sector no transable (32% del efecto total). Tanto el efecto positivo del crédito como el negativo de las remesas resultaron relativamente bajos. Por otra parte, regresiones logit revelan que la probabilidad de ser pobre fue 10 puntos porcentuales inferior en 2005/6 respecto a 1999, sugiriendo que los factores macroeconómicos han jugado un papel significativo en la reducción observada de los niveles de pobreza. Si bien el veredicto sobre la dolarización resulta positivo en términos de pobreza, es indudable que reducciones adicionales requerirán el logro de altas tasas de crecimiento a nivel agregado que beneficien a los sectores de menores ingresos.

This study uses for the first time household survey data from a number of Latin American countries to investigate the degree and effects of the access to credit on the income and education of poor households. With this goal in mind, multivariate regressions are run to estimate the impact of the credit to the poor on their labor income and on the probability of their children to stay at both primary and secondary school. Afterwards, based on these results, alternative credit policies are simulated. Much in line with the available microcredit evidence, the study provides mixed results: while no negative effects are identified, positive and significant loadings are found in several, but not all cases. The simulation exercises support the claim that microcredit might be a relatively powerful but still limited tool for meeting the MDGs.

Este trabajo utiliza por primera vez información de encuestas de hogares para América Latina para investigar el grado y los efectos del acceso al crédito en el ingreso y la educación en los hogares pobres. Con este propósito en mente, se estiman regresiones multivariadas para estimar el impacto de créditos en los ingresos laborales de los pobres y en la probabilidad de que sus hijos se mantengan en la primaria y secundaria. En línea con la evidencia disponible en el tema, el estudio encuentra resultados mixtos. Pese a que no se identifican casos negativos, se encuentran efectos positivos y significativos en algunos (aunque no todos) casos. Los ejercicios de simulación apoyan la noción de que el microcrédito puede ser una herramienta poderosa pero con limitaciones para alcanzar los ODMs., This study uses for the first time household survey data from a number of Latin American countries to investigate the degree and effects of the access to credit on the income and education of poor households. With this goal in mind, multivariate regressions are run to estimate the impact of the credit to the poor on their labor income and on the probability of their children to stay at both primary and secondary school. Afterwards, based on these results, alternative credit policies are simulated. Much in line with the available microcredit evidence, the study provides mixed results: while no negative effects are identified, positive and significant loadings are found in several, but not all cases. The simulation exercises support the claim that microcredit might be a relatively powerful but still limited tool for meeting the MDGs., Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS)

This paper contributes to the empirical literature on pensions and saving by studying the influence of funded pension systems on the gross national saving rate using a sample of 48 developed and developing countries over the 1980-2004 period. To the best of our knowledge, this updated database-which builds on the one assembled by Lopez Murphy and Musalem (2004)- is the largest on pension funds stocks and flows. Our panel data econometric results suggest that a one-dollar increase in pension saving increases national saving by between 0 and 20 cents. The structure of the system in terms of mandatory participation and portfolio composition does not affect the results, but the maturity of the system does seem to be a robust driver of national saving, inducing an increase of the saving rate of 0.3-0.5 percentage points for each additional year of existence. Reforming countries does not seem to have attained higher saving rates than others. Concerning other saving drivers, the old age dependency ratio and the urbanization ratio (even though the latter loses significance in some regressions) were negatively correlated with saving, while GDP growth, inflation, the terms of trade, and the current account displayed a positive sign. In terms of saving projections, the rather declining trend in pension saving implies that this is unlikely to boost the national saving rate, but the rising old age dependency ratio might cause, over a 25-year time horizon, a fall in the saving rate of 2.1 and 3.3 percentage points in OECD and non-OECD countries, respectively., Departamento de Economía

Although many papers have dealt with the relation between trade structure and economic growth, much less attention has been paid to the underlying determinants of export diversification, an exercise that should provide valuable research and policy recommendations regarding the room for active government interventions and their expected outcomes. To fill this gap, this project aims to investigate this issue by: (1) employing econometric techniques on a cross-country database; (2) analyzing, as a case study, firm-level export diversification in Argentina. As a result of the pronounced real devaluation of the peso in 2002-2004, this country offers a nice quasi-natural experiment to examine whether relative prices might influence export diversification and to observe whether diversification is a between- or within-firm phenomenon., Departamento de Economía

Recent empirical and theoretical literature on the impact of real exchange rate devaluations on economic performance questions the traditional expansionary effect generated within standard Mundell-Fleming models. Contractionary devaluations may arise when firms face maturity or currency mismatches that, when faced with real exchange rate depreciations, lead to balance-sheet effects that erode firms' wealth and lead to an output contraction. While some authors show that the standard Mundell-Fleming result may hold even in the presence of currency mismatches, others point out that, if the balance sheet effect is large enough, devaluations can be contractionary. Using a large panel of 57 countries across the world and various newly constructed measures of dollarization, we test whether the balance sheet effect hypothesis has been relevant during the past decades in explaining economic downturns. Additionally, we explore the channels through which devaluations can be contractionary; in particular, we explore whether investment and consumption decisions are negatively affected by exchange rate devaluations under currency mismatches.

The goal of this paper is twofold. First, we put together, for the first time, quantitative measures on the quality of the corporate governance and the ownership structure for 65 non-financial listed companies in Argentina with information for 2003-2004. A wide array of official and private sources were used to this purpose. In a nutshell, companies seem to be poorly governed vis-à-vis international practices. In turn, ownership appears to be quite concentrated at the level of the largest ultimate shareholder, but separation of control and cash flow rights prevails in less than half of the companies, with pyramiding being the main mechanism to create such wedge. Second, we put to the test the predictions of recent theories linking those measures with corporate performance and dividend policy in 2000-2003. Concerning performance, the results point to a sizable and robust effect of our governance measure on both the return on assets and Tobin s q. Moreover, the separation of control and cash flow rights for the largest shareholder-an indicator of the incentives to expropriate minority shareholders- hinders performance directly, and also attenuates the beneficial impact from good governance rules. When it comes to dividends, only our governance measure appears to exert a positive and marked effect on the cash dividend-to-cash flow ratio. However, the estimates prove to be fragile to the inclusion of some additional controls correlated to governance., Departamento de Economía