Juan Carlos Gozzi

Innovative Experiences in Access to Finance: Market Friendly Roles for the Visible Hand?

Interest in access to finance has increased significantly in recent years, as growing evidence suggests that lack of access to credit prevents lower-income households and small firms from financing high return investment projects, having an adverse effect on growth and poverty alleviation. This study describes some recent innovative experiences to broaden access to credit. These experiences are consistent with an emerging new view that recognizes a limited role for the public sector in financial markets, but contends that there might be room for well-designed, restricted interventions in collaboration with the private sector to foster financial development and broaden access. The authors illustrate this view with several recent experiences in Latin America and then discuss some open policy questions about the role of the public and private sectors in driving these financial innovations.

Capital Market Development: Whither Latin America?

Over the past decades, many countries have implemented significant reforms to foster capital market development. Latin American countries were at the forefront of this process. The authors analyze where Latin American capital markets stand after these reforms. They find that despite the intense reform effort, capital markets in Latin America remain underdeveloped relative to markets in other regions. Furthermore, stock markets are below what can be expected, given Latin Americas economic and institutional fundamentals. The authors discuss alternative ways of interpreting this evidence. They argue that it is difficult to pinpoint which policies Latin American countries should pursue to overcome their poor capital market development. Moreover, they argue that expectations about the outcome of the reform process may need to be revisited to take into account intrinsic characteristics of emerging economies. The latter may limit the scope for developing deep domestic capital markets in a context of international financial integration.

Liquidity Shocks, Local Banks, and Economic Activity: Evidence from the 2007-2009 Crisis

This paper studies the relationship between shocks to local banks and economic activity, by exploiting differences in the liability structure of small U.S. commercial banks during the 2007-09 crisis. Banks that relied more heavily on wholesale liabilities reduced lending relatively more during the crisis than banks funding themselves with retail deposits, suggesting that the use of short-term wholesale funding exposed banks to a sudden dry-up in market liquidity. Moreover, metropolitan areas where banks relied more on wholesale liabilities experienced larger reductions in employment and establishments during the crisis, suggesting that adverse shocks to banks hurt the economy. This effect was stronger in areas with more bank-dependent firms, such as small businesses and firms with higher external financing needs.

How Firms Use Domestic and International Corporate Bond Markets

This paper provides the first comprehensive documentation of how firms use domestic and international corporate bond markets. Debt issues in domestic and international markets have different characteristics, not explained by differences across firms or countries. International issues tend to be larger, of shorter maturity, denominated in foreign currency, include more fixed rate contracts, and entail lower yields. These patterns remain when analyzing issues by firms from countries with more developed domestic markets and higher financial integration, and even when comparing issues conducted by the same firm in different markets. These findings are consistent with the views that (1) frictions limit the ability of investors and firms to enter into certain contracts in certain markets, (2) domestic and international markets provide distinct financial services and firms use them as complements, and (3) firms with access to domestic and international markets enjoy advantages relative to those that rely solely on domestic markets.

Financial Development in Latin America: Big Emerging Issues, Limited Policy Answers

This paper argues that the dominant policy paradigm on financial development is increasingly insufficient to address big emerging issues that are particularly relevant for financial systems in Latin America. This paradigm was shaped over the past decades by a fundamental shift in thinking toward market-based financial development and a complex process of financial crises interpretation. The result has been a richly textured policy paradigm focused on promoting financial stability and the convergence to international standards. It argues, however, that there is a growing dissonance between the current paradigm and the emerging issues, which is illustrated by discussing challenges in three areas: stock markets, small and medium enterprise loans, and defined-contribution pension funds. The paper concludes that the dominant policy paradigm is ill-suited to provide significant guidance in relation to the big emerging issues. It emphasizes the need to take a fresh look at the evidence, improve the diagnoses, revisit expectations, and revise the paradigm.

Innovative Experiences in Access to Finance

Interest in access to finance and awareness of its importance have increased significantly since the early 2000s. Growing evidence suggests that lack of access to credit prevents many households and firms from financing high-return investment projects, which has an adverse effect on growth and poverty alleviation. Despite the increasing awareness of the importance of access to finance among both researchers and policymakers, there are still some major gaps in our understanding of the main drivers of access, as well as about the impact of different policies in this area. This book aims to fill some of these gaps by discussing recent innovative experiences in broadening access to credit in Latin America. These experiences are consistent with an emerging new view that, while recognizing the central role of the public sector in improving the contractual and informational environment for financial markets, also contends that there might be room for well-designed, restricted interventions in collaboration with the private sector to foster the development of financial markets and broaden access to them. In particular, the book analyzes, among other things, some interesting experiences from Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico that use different instruments to broaden access to credit in a sustainable way, such as structured finance, factoring, credit guarantees, and correspondent banking. Most of these experiences have led to financial innovation by developing new financial products and coordinating different players in the financial and real sectors to overcome barriers to access to credit. The book provides a first systematic analysis of these innovative experiences, including an analytical framework to understand problems of access to finance and a discussion of the effects and optimal design of public interventions. Finally, the book discusses some open policy questions about the role of the private and public sectors (including state?owned banks) in broadening access to finance in a sustainable and market-friendly manner.

Financial Integration and the Co-Movement of Economic Activity: Evidence from U.S. States

We analyze the effect of the geographic expansion of banks across U.S. states on the co-movement of economic activity between states. To identify the causal effect of financial integration on business cycle synchronization, we exploit the staggered timing of the removal of restrictions to interstate banking to construct time-varying instrumental variables at the state-pair level. We find a strong positive effect of bilateral banking integration on the synchronization of economic activity between states, conditional on national shocks and state pair heterogeneity. This effect is stronger for states experiencing periods of financial turmoil and for industries that rely more on external financing. Furthermore, we find that integration increases the similarity of fluctuations in bank lending between states. Our findings are consistent with theories highlighting the role of banks in transmitting financial shocks across regions, and show that integration has increased output synchronization between U.S. states.