Tjeerd M. Boonman

Sovereign Defaults, Business Cycles and Economic Growth in Latin America, 1870-2012

Sovereign debt crises have regained attention since the recent crises in several European countries. This paper focuses on a particular aspect of the debt crisis literature: the impact of sovereign default on economic growth. Previous research agrees on the negative impact, but not on size and duration. We are particularly interested in the heterogeneity of crisis impacts: Why are some crises deeper and longer than others? And what is the role of business cycles? We analyze four Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico) for the period 1870-2012, covering 14 sovereign debt defaults. We find that most sovereign defaults start in recessions, and in unfavorable international circumstances. Economic growth is heavily affected in the year of the default and the year after. Then economic growth picks up, but recovery is far from smooth, including periods of recurrent negative growth. We observe strong heterogeneity in the impact, which we attribute to commodity price changes, economic growth and government expenditure in the run-up to the crisis.

Why didn't the Global Financial Crisis hit Latin America?

Latin America has a rich history of financial crises. However, it was relatively unharmed by the 2007-2009 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). This paper investigates why, and in particular the role of commodity prices and its institutional framework - in line with the fourth generation financial crisis model. We set up Early Warning Systems (EWS) for Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. These consist of an ordered logit model for currency crises for the period 1990-2007 with a dynamic factor model to deal with the large number of explanatory variables. We present forecasts for the period 2008-2009. We find that international indicators play an important role in explaining currency crises in Mexico, while banking indicators and commodities explain the currency crisis in Argentina and Brazil. Furthermore, debt and domestic economy indicators are relevant for Argentina and Mexico. Finally, we observe that currency crises in all three countries are related to institutional indicators. For none of the countries the Early Warning System would have issued an early warning for the GFC.

Sovereign debt crises in Latin America: A market pressure approach

ABSTRACT We construct a continuous sovereign debt crisis index for four large Latin American countries for the period 1870−2012. To obtain the optimal set of indicators and the optimal value of the threshold for dating crises we apply the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. Our sovereign debt crisis index is a weighted average of three indicators: the debt-to-GDP ratio, the external interest rate spread, and the exports-to-imports ratio. The continuous index allows a more advanced analysis of sovereign debt crises as illustrated with an investigation of the relationship between sovereign debt crises and business cycles in Latin America.

Identification of Currency Crises in Emerging Economies: A Combined Approach

The first step for empirical studying currency crises is to identify or date these crises. This is not an easy task – not even the conceptual definition is agreed upon, let alone an operational definition. The choice of a definition has an impact on the identification of crises, and may even provide an explanation to the mixed performance of early warning systems for currency crises. In empirical studies typically a single definition is adopted and the crisis dates are compared to the narrative to determine a set of currency crisis dates. We present a novel way to identify currency crises. We employ combinations of definitions, which provide a wider base than using a single definition. Through combining we can overcome setbacks of the individual definitions. We date currency crises in 35 emerging economies for the period 1990 to 2016, in a monthly frequency. We compare our dataset with the narrative, expert opinions and other studies, and find that a combination of several definitions fits the narrative better than any single crisis definition. We include the narrative in the appendix, which makes this work more transparent and useful for other investigators.

THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF SOVEREIGN DEFAULTS IN LATIN AMERICA 1870-2012

This article analyzes sovereign debt defaults in four Latin American countries—Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico—for the period 1870-2012. The impact of sovereign defaults on real GDP growth is generally short-lived, while the impact in terms of output losses is deep and lasts long. Defaults in the period 1972-2012 show a deep and long-lasting impact compared to defaults in earlier periods. Moreover, the length of the contraction that follows a default is associated with favourable international conditions in the run-up to a default, while the depth of the contraction is associated with an expansive domestic economy in the run-up to a default. The results fit with boom–bust theories and sudden stop models.