Enrique Kawamura

Competitive Equilibrium with Unawareness in Economies with Production

Abstract This paper investigates an extension of the GEI-unawareness framework by Modica et al. (Econ. Theory 12 (1998) 259) to economies with entrepreneurial production. Existence of equilibrium is guaranteed given decreasing returns to scale. Firms value and investment decision in equilibrium are characterized. An example of commodity innovation shows that the effect of different degrees of awareness on investment decisions depend upon the degree of risk aversion. In the case of log preferences unawareness may not matter for commodity innovation, although this depends on other preference features.

Insider Trading and Corporate Governance in Latin America

Unlike outside investors, controlling groups have the option to trade on inside information and can exercise it at the expense of outside investors. This paper computes informed trading probabilities (ITPs) for the universe of liquid stocks from seven Latin American countries, trading both at home and as ADRs, and applies ITPs in order to address corporate governance questions. Substantial heterogeneity of ITP is found within a given institutional environment. Nonetheless, significant differences in mean ITP are identified across volume ranges, countries, and security types. ITP has an intuitively appealing correlation with some (but not all) of the country-wide investor protection variables used in the literature. Substantial increases in ITP are found just before public corporate announcements, suggesting that privately-informed agents are exploiting their privilege when it is most valuable. ITP is priced in the market: companies with higher ITPs fetch lower Tobin’s qs. It is concluded that Informed Trading Probability proxies for unobservable corporate governance quality as the heterogeneity of firm behavior seems to be recognized by the market and priced accordingly.

Central Bank Liquidity Management and "Unconventional" Monetary Policies

This paper presents a small open economy model to analyze the role of central bank liquidity management in implementing “unconventional” monetary policies within an inflation targeting framework. In particular, the paper explicitly models the facilities that the central bank uses to manage liquidity in the economy, which creates a role for the central bank balance sheet in equilibrium. This permits the analysis of two “unconventional” policies: sterilized exchange-rate interventions and expanding the list of eligible collaterals accepted at the liquidity facilities operated by the central bank. These policies have been recently implemented by several central banks: the former as a way to counteract persistent appreciations in the domestic currency, and the latter as a response to the recent global financial crisis in 2008. As a case study, the paper provides a detailed account of the Chilean experience with these alternative tools, as well as a quantitative evaluation of the effects of some of these policies.

Regulation and State Intervention in Non-Renewable Natural Resources: The Cases of the Oil and Gas Sectors in Argentina

This paper develops a theoretical model based on stylized facts regarding regulation and performance of the oil and gas sectors in Argentina after the fall of Convertibility. Regarding performance, facts include an important drop in domestic production and investment, as well as a reversal in the energy trade balance (from surplus to de…cit). Regulations include a direct government intervention in upstream and downstream prices (below international ones), together with strong restrictions to export. The model uses a self-enforcing equilibrium concept derived from Yared (2010) to endogeneize such policy variables such as upstream domestic prices and downstream energy prices. The model can explain some of the regulation policies observed in the facts, including very low energy prices and strictly positive subsidies.

Firms’ Investment and Savings in Latin America: Stylized Facts from the Enterprise Survey

This paper describes the share of investment in fixed capital and working capital financed by retained earnings using a harmonized dataset from the World Bank Enterprise Survey. The sample includes firms across countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Descriptive statistics are presented for the share of purchases of fixed assets financed with internal funds or retained earnings, the share of working capital financed with internal funds, the ratio between internal funds used for purchasing fixed assets and sales, and annual purchases of fixed assets (as a proportion of annual sales). Also presented are stylized facts exploring how these variables differ by country, firm size, firm age, registration, sector of activity, and ownership. It is found that internal funds are extensively used to finance both purchases of fixed assets and working capital, particularly by smaller firms located in countries with less developed financial markets. Investment in fixed assets represents about 7. 5 percent of sales in the region and is significantly higher among larger and registered firms.

Financial Innovation in Multi-Period Economies

I present an attempt to construct multi-period, finite horizon extensions to the well -known two- period financial innovations literature. I first extend the definition of competitive equilibrium with innovations. It is shown that, with a dominating household type, it is impossible to observe a set of complete Arrow securities with a positive amount issued for each of them in equilibrium, either at the last date or at any date.