The Financial Impact of the IDB’s Liquidity Program for Growth Sustainability.

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.

What Determines the Access to Credit by SMEs in Argentina?

This work discusses the determinants of the access to credit for a sample of about 140 Argentine small and medium firms, based on a unique database gathered by the Union Industrial Argentina in 1999. Among other findings, the evidence shows that the acceptance of overdraft lines at high interest rates and very short maturity is an important factor regarding the probability of getting a bank loan, while the availability of collateral does not seem to affect such probability. All in all, the results appear to be consistent with a risk taking behavior by banks in their loan policy toward this set of firms, an observation seemingly at odds with the conservative strategy that presumably banks follow.

Explaining Dividend Policies in Argentina

Dividend policy is central to the performance and valuation of listed companies, but the issue still remains scarcely investigated in emerging countries. The purpose of this paper is to study, for the first time, the determinants of the dividend policy of listed companies in Argentina over the 1996-2002 period. Although the modern theory stresses agency and other informational problems as the principal explanations of the so-called dividend puzzle, we will contend here that for many companies with highly concentrated ownership, a model of a sole owner-manager provides most (but not all) of the needed clues to answer the question as to why companies pay dividends in Argentina. Our main findings are that: (a) Bigger and more profitable firms without good investment opportunities pay more dividends; (b) Companies with more fluid access to debt pay more dividends; (c) Furthermore, riskier and more indebted firms prefer to pay lower dividends, and the same applies to foreign-owned firms; (d) ADR issuers disburse more dividends than other companies; and (e) Firms do not seem to care about maintaining stable payout ratios over time, but there is some inertia in that non-payers tend to stay that way and otherwise.

Remittances and Life Cycle Deficits in Latin America

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.Latin America, remittances, life cycle, retirement

MDGs and Microcredit: An Empirical Evaluation for Latin American Countries

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.

Corporate Leverage, the Cost of Capital,and the Financial Crisis in Latin America

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.Corporate leverage, cost of debt, financial crisis, Latin America.

FINANCIAL CRISIS AND SECTORAL DIVERSIFICATION OF ARGENTINE BANKS, 1999-2004

We explore the impact and evolution of loan portfolio diversification during the 2001-2002 Argentine financial crisis. Using a novel dataset that combines public information on the main activity of the largest 930 Argentine firms with their borrowing from each bank operating in the country during the 1999-2004 period, we find that banks did not modify much their loan portfolio mix as a response to the crisis, even though the econometric results point to a positive effect of sectoral diversification and lending to tradeable sectors on bank profitability and risk mitigation. Our results suggest that larger banks benefit more from diversification that smaller ones, and that the benefits of diversification are greater during the downside of the business cycle.Focus, Diversification, Bank risk, Bank return

Acceso al financiamiento de las PYMES en Argentina: Estado de situación y propuestas de política

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.

SME Access to Credit in Guatemala and Nicaragua: Challenging Conventional Wisdom with New Evidence

This paper develops a conceptual framework and offers new statistical evidence on the access to credit by micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in Guatemala and Nicaragua. To this end, and after reviewing the existing literature on the topic, it produces new empirical evidence drawn from the official Household Survey and the World Bank’s Investment Climate Survey, conducted in both countries in 2006. The core contribution of the paper lies in the critical revision of three pieces of common knowledge, namely: (1) A large fraction of MSMEs has an excess demand for credit; (2) In the presence of credit market failures, governments must and actually do assist MSMEs in gaining access to loan facilities; and (3) Alternative credit instruments, such as leasing, factoring, microcredit, and third-party guarantee schemes, can be a suitable and massive solution for the lack of financing. Our analysis refutes to a large extent these assertions and advances some basic policy prescriptions that should help improve the resource allocation and impact of specific MSME financial programs.