Arturo Galindo

Does Financial Liberalization Improve the Allocation of Investment? Micro Evidence from Developing Countries

Has financial liberalization improved the efficiency with which investment funds are allocated to competing uses? In this paper, we address this question using firm-level panel data from 12 developing countries. We develop a summary index of the efficiency of investment allocation that measures whether, and to what extent, investment funds are going to firms with a higher marginal return to capital. We then examine the relationship between this index and various measures of financial liberalization. The results suggest that in the majority of cases financial reform has led to an increase in the efficiency with which investment funds are allocated.

Debt composition and balance sheet effects of currency depreciation: a summary of the micro evidence

Abstract This paper surveys recent empirical evidence on the determinants of the currency composition of debt, and on the impact of exchange rate fluctuations on economic activity. It suggests that Latin American firms tend to partially match the composition of their debt with the currency composition of their income stream but the liability dollarization can reduce or possibly reverse the typical Mundell–Fleming result of expansionary devaluations.

Better the Devil that You Know: Evidence on Entry Costs Faced by Foreign Banks

Institutional and legal differences between countries increase entry costs and reduce the ability of banks to expand abroad. We use bilateral foreign banking data for 176 countries to estimate a gravity model in which bilateral cross-border banking activity is explained, in addition to standard variables, by legal and institutional differences. We find that foreign banking is negatively affected by absolute differences in the legal setup and in basic institutions between source and host countries. Differences in the legal origin, for example, reduce bilateral participation in the banking system by nearly 11 percent. Additionally we do not find strong evidence suggesting asymmetries in adapting to “better” or “worse” institutional/legal environments.

Living with Dollarization and the Route to Dedollarization

Financial dollarization in Latin America has been growing over time in spite of a major reduction in inflation and a shift toward central bank independence. After discussing the key stylized facts of dollarization and dedollarization in the region, we discuss the risks this process poses to the region. In particular, we explore the validity of concerns about the effectiveness of monetary policy in a dollarized economy and about a loss of seigniorage revenue in such an economy. After concluding that to a large extent these concerns lack empirical support, we focus on the main reason for concern: increased vulnerability due to the dollarization of public and private debt. We emphasize the importance of precautionary/regulatory measures to limit the scope of mismatches originating from liability dollarization, and of developing financial instruments designed to hedge against currency risk. Moreover, we deal with the experience of policies directly aimed at deepening domestic financial markets in local currency assets and in gradually lengthening the maturity of these assets. We find that important lessons from the experience of dedollarization in Israel are of particular interest for Latin America.

Real exchange rates, dollarization and industrial employment in Latin America

This paperuses a panel dataset on industrial employment and trade for 9 Latin American countries for which liability dollarization data at the industrial level is available. It tests whether real exchange rate fluctuations have a significant impact on employment, and analyze whether the impact varies with the degree of trade openness and liability dollarization. Econometric evidence supports the view that real exchange rate depreciations can impact employment growth positively, but this effect is reversed as liability dollarization increases. In industries with high liability dollarization, the overall impact of a real exchange rate depreciation can be negative.

Financial Integration and Foreign Banks in Latin America: How Do They Impact the Transmission of External Financial Shocks?

This paper explores the impact of international financial integration on credit markets in Latin America, using a cross-country dataset covering 17 countries between 1996 and 2008. It is found that financial integration amplifies the impact of international financial shocks on aggregate credit and interest rate fluctuations. Nonetheless, the net impact of integration on deepening credit markets dominates for the large majority of states of nature. The paper also uses a detailed bank-level dataset that covers more than 500 banks for a similar time period to explore the role of financial integrationcaptured through the participation of foreign banksin propagating external shocks. It is found that interest rates charged and loans supplied by foreign-owned banks respond more to external financial shocks than those supplied by domestically owned banks. This does not hold for all foreign banks. Spanish banks in the sample behave more like domestic banks and do not amplify the impact of foreign shocks on credit and interest rates.

Financial Liberalization: Does It Pay to Join the Party?

Financial liberalization is a highly controversial policy. Despite the fact that almost all the regions of the world have undergone liberalization of their financial markets, its effect on the performance of different economic sectors remains a question. In our research, we find that financial liberalization reduces the cost of capital, boosting the relative growth rates of economic sectors that for technological reasons rely heavily on external (to the firm) finance. This result, however, depends on the quality of institutions supporting credit markets. The effects of financial liberalization are more notable in countries that have and enforce regulations to protect property rights. In this sense, the answer to the question in the title of the paper is not clear-cut. The impact of financial liberalization on growth depends on underlying institutional factors.

Do state owned banks promote growth? Cross-country evidence for manufacturing industries

This paper tests the efficiency of different structures of bank ownership in terms of its ability to target manufacturing sectors in need of credit. We find that state- owned banks do not play a significant role in the development of industries that rely more on external finance and/or that have less tangible assets to pledge as collateral.

Loyal Lenders or Fickle Financiers: Foreign Banks in Latin America

We suggest that foreign banks may represent a trade-off for their developing country hosts. A portfolio model is developed to show that a more diversified international bank may be one of lower overall risk and less susceptible to funding shocks but may react more to shocks that affect expected returns in a particular host country. Foreign banks have become particularly important in Latin America where we find strong support for these theoretical predictions using a dataset of individual Latin American banks in eleven countries. Moreover, we find no significant difference between the size of the response of foreign banks to a negative liquidity shock and a positive opportunity shock: in both cases the market share of foreign banks in credit increases.

Creditor Protection and Financial Cycles

We develop a model in which the elasticity of credit to exogenous shocks depends on creditor rights regulations. We show that an increase in creditor protection reduces the elasticity of credit supply to exogenous shocks, and hence the amplitude of the credit cycle. Using an extended set of a measure of creditor rights protection in the spirit of La Porta et al. (1998), we find that stricter creditor rights regulations not only increase the breadth of the credit market but also reduce the volatility of the credit cycle.