Volatilidad, deuda externa y riesgo fiscal: simulación de los efectos de las sacudidas sobre el ajuste fiscal de 13 países latinoamericanos

(Disponible en idioma inglés únicamente) En este trabajo se analiza de qué manera la combinación de endeudamiento y sacudidas exógenas inducen la inestabilidad de los países latinoamericanos. Se presenta una técnica para simular los efectos de las sacudidas en los costos del endeudamiento externo y la respuesta de las políticas fiscales en el ajuste a dichas sacudidas, y la misma se aplica a 13 países latinoamericanos endeudados.

Sovereign Debt, Volatility and Insurance

External debt increases the vulnerability of indebted emerging market economies to macroeconomic volatility and financial crises. Capital account reversals often lead to sovereign debt repayment crises that are only resolved after prolonged and difficult debt restructuring. Foreign indebtedness exacerbates domestic financial distress in crisis, increasing both the incidence and severity of emerging market crises. These outcomes contrast with the presumption that access to international capital markets should help countries to smooth domestic consumption and investment against macroeconomic shocks. This paper uses models of sovereign to reconsider the role of sovereign debt renegotiation for international risk sharing and presents an approach for analyzing contractual innovations for implementing contingent debt repayments. The financial innovations that might allow risk-sharing rather than risk-inducing capital flows go beyond contractual changes that ease debt renegotiation by separating contingent payments from bonds.

International Financial Integration, Sovereignty, and Constraints on Macroeconomic Policies

This paper considers the consequences of international financial market integration for national fiscal and monetary policies that derive from the absence of an international sovereign authority to define and enforce contractual obligations across borders. The sovereign immunity of national governments serves as a fundamental constraint on international finance and is used to derive intertemporal budget constraints for sovereign nations and their governments. It is shown that the appropriate debt limit for a country allows for state-contingent repayment. With non-contingent debt instruments, debt renegotiation occurs in equilibrium with positive probability. A model of tax smoothing is adopted to show how information imperfections lead to conventional bond contracts that are renegotiated when a critical level of indebtedness is reached. Renegotiation is interpreted in terms of nominal and real denominated bonds drawing implications for the intertemporal borrowing constraint for monetary policies, the accumulation of reserve assets, and current account sustainability.

Sovereign debt, volatility, and insurance

External debt increases the vulnerability of indebted emerging market economies to macroeconomic volatility and financial crises. Capital account reversals often lead sovereign debt repayment crises that are only resolved after prolonged and difficult debt restructuring. Foreign indebtedness exacerbates domestic financial distress in crisis, increasing both the incidence and severity of emerging market crises. These outcomes contrast with the presumption that access to international capital markets should help countries to smooth domestic consumption and investment against macroeconomic shocks. This paper uses models of sovereign to reconsider the role of sovereign debt renegotiation for international risk sharing and presents an approach for analyzing contractual innovations for implementing contingent debt repayments. The financial innovations that might allow risk-sharing rather than risk-inducing capital flows go beyond contractual changes that ease debt renegotiation by separating contingent payments from bonds.Debts, External ; Financial crises ; Insurance

Macroeconomic Stabilization with a Common Currency:

The implications of monetary unification for fiscal policies are discussed. The roles of nominal exchange rate flexibility in the presence of asymmetric national shocks and nominal price rigidities as an automatic stabilizer and source of disturbances to real economic performance are reviewed. Two main themes are considered. The first is whether a system of fiscal insurance across member states qualitatively replicates the effects of autonomous monetary policy instruments when exchange rates are permanently fixed. It is argued that while fiscal insurance schemes increase the instruments available to fiscal authorities to influence resource allocation, they do not augment existing fiscal instruments in a manner that replicates monetary policy under long run monetary neutrality in an overlapping generations economy. Restrictions imposed on national fiscal instruments as a condition of monetary unification may give rise to a need for fiscal insurance to replace their role as stabilizers. The second theme adresses whether political unification is a necessary logical conclusion of the usefulness of fiscal insurance scheme. The argument that sustainable insurance arrangements can be devised without foregoing national sovereignty over fiscal policymaking is discussed.

Macroeconomic stabilization with a common currency: Does European Monetary Unification create a need for fiscal insurance of federalism?

The implications of monetary unification for fiscal policies are discussed. The roles of nominal exchange rate flexibility in the presence of asymmetric national shocks and nominal price rigidities as an automatic stabilizer and source of disturbances to real economic performance are reviewed. Two main themes are considered. The first is whether a system of fiscal insurance across member states qualitatively replicates the effects of autonomous monetary policy instruments when exchange rates are permanently fixed. It is argued that while fiscal insurance schemes increase the instruments available to fiscal authorities to influence resource allocation, they do not augment existing fiscal instruments in a manner that replicates monetary policy under long-run monetary neutrality in an overlapping generations economy. Restrictions imposed on national fiscal instruments as a condition of monetary unification may give rise to a need for fiscal insurance to replace their role as stabilizers. The second theme addresses whether political unification is a necessary logical conclusion of the usefulness of fiscal insurance scheme. The argument that sustainable insurance arrangements can be devised without foregoing national sovereignty over fiscal policymaking is discussed. --monetary union,exchange rate regimes,fiscal insurance,fiscal policy coordination

Deposit Insurance, Regulatory Forbearance and Economic Growth: Implications for the Japanese Banking Crisis

An endogenous growth model with financial intermediation is used to show how public deposit insurance and weak prudential regulation can lead to banking crises and permanent declines in economic growth. The impact of regulatory forbearance on investment, saving and asset price dynamics under perfect foresight are derived in the model. The assumptions of the theoretical model are based on essential features of the Japanese financial system and its regulation. The model demonstrates how banking and growth crises can evolve under perfect foresight. The dynamics for economic aggregates and asset prices predicted by the model are shown to be generally consistent with the experience of the Japanese economy and financial system through the 1990s. We also test our maintained hypothesis of rational expectations using asset price data for Japan over the 1980s and 1990s. An implication of our analysis is that delaying the resolution of banking crises adversely affects future economic growth.

Financial intermediation, agency and collateral and the dynamics of banking crises: theory and evidence for the Japanese banking crisis

We outline a model of an endogenously evolving banking crisis in a growing economy subject to either idiosyncratic or aggregate productivity shocks. The model incorporates agency problems at two levels: between firms and their banks and between banks and the banks’ depositors and deposit insurers. In equilibrium, banks have an incentive to renegotiate loans to insolvent firms, leading to an increasing contingent liability of the government with deposit insurance and regulatory forbearance. The growth rate of output is endogenous, and we explain how the agency problems affect the qualitative dynamics of the economy in this framework. We find that the dynamics predicted by our model fit the recent behavior of the Japanese economy well. As Japan was hit by a succession of adverse aggregate shocks in the 1990s, bank portfolios continued to deteriorate, and the market value of collateral (land) collapsed. The decline in collateral values led to a fall in bank lending, a decline in physical investment, and finally, a fall in GDP.

Trade Policy under Endogenous Credibility

Because trade liberalization which is anticipated to be temporary creates a divergence between the effective domestic rate of interest and the world rate of interest, tariff-reduction in the presence of international financial asset trade may reduce welfare for a small country. Calvo has argued that even though the government intends to liberalize trade permanently, if the private sector believes with some probability that a tariff will be imposed in the future, then free trade may not be optimal. This paper first formalizes this argument and discusses the optimal policy for a government which seeks to maximize representative household welfare. The government's lack of credibility is represented by a set of beliefs the private sector holds about the type of government it faces. Next, beliefs are endoqenized by allowing me private sector to update them using Bayes' rule. In one approach, the true government's objective is maximize welfare for the economy, so that it does not seek to imitate another type, in contrast with other recent models of policy credibility. With learning, the government eventually adopts free trade, even though restricted trade is optimal initially.

Financial intermediation, agency, and collateral and the dynamics of banking crises: theory and evidence for the Japanese banking crisis

We outline a model of an endogenously evolving banking crisis in a growing economy subject to either idiosyncratic or aggregate productivity shocks. The model incorporates agency problems at two levels: between firms and their banks and between banks and the banks' depositors and deposit insurers. In equilibrium, banks have an incentive to renegotiate loans to insolvent firms, leading to an increasing contingent liability of the government with deposit insurance and regulatory forbearance. The growth rate of output is endogenous, and we explain how the agency problems affect the qualitative dynamics of the economy in this framework. We find that the dynamics predicted by our model fit the recent behavior of the Japanese economy well. As Japan was hit by a succession of adverse aggregate shocks in the 1990s, bank portfolios continued to deteriorate and the market value of collateral (land) collapsed. The decline in collateral values led to a fall in bank lending, a decline in physical investment, and finally, a fall in GDP.