{"title":"The role of informality in the economic growth, employment, and inflation during the COVID-19 crisis","authors":"Manuel Torres-Favela, Edgar M. Luna","doi":"10.1016/j.latcb.2024.100150","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.latcb.2024.100150","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the global economy, with variable effects on economic growth, employment, and inflation rates in different countries and regions. Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region experienced the most severe consequences for economic growth and employment, while the change in inflation was relatively less affected. A notable characteristic of the LAC region is its high level of informality and its close relationship with inflation dynamics. A dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model was built and simulated to understand the role of informality in the COVID-19 crisis. The findings highlight that the informal sector exacerbates the negative impacts of the crisis on economic growth and employment rates but mitigates the inflationary effects resulting from the containment measures. In summary, the high rates of informality in the LAC region play an important role in shaping the consequences of restrictive measures to curb the pandemic on the economy.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":100867,"journal":{"name":"Latin American Journal of Central Banking","volume":"6 1","pages":"Article 100150"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141852732","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Capital ratios and the Weighted Average Cost of Capital: Evidence from Chilean banks","authors":"Rodrigo Cifuentes , Tomás Gómez , Alejandro Jara","doi":"10.1016/j.latcb.2024.100143","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.latcb.2024.100143","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper finds that an additional percentage point in the ratio of Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) capital to risk-weighted assets is associated with an increase in the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) of Chilean banks by a maximum of only 11.7 basis points. This result is found by evaluating the impact of capital ratios on the return on capital and on the return on debt, following alternative empirical strategies which consider both market data and bank balance sheet information. Higher capital ratios decrease the return on banks’ capital – partly because more capital makes banks less risky – in magnitudes similar to those found in the literature for other countries. Second, we study the role of capital in the return of bank debt. We see a strong impact of capital ratios on the return of subordinated debt and no effect on senior debt.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":100867,"journal":{"name":"Latin American Journal of Central Banking","volume":"6 1","pages":"Article 100143"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141853860","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Reizle Jade C. Platitas, Jan Christopher G. Ocampo
{"title":"From bottlenecks to inflation: Impact of global supply-chain disruptions on inflation in select Asian economies","authors":"Reizle Jade C. Platitas, Jan Christopher G. Ocampo","doi":"10.1016/j.latcb.2024.100141","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.latcb.2024.100141","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Supply-chain bottlenecks emerged alongside unprecedented inflationary surges amid the resulting mismatches in supply and demand for goods and services throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. This study employs a local projection approach to investigate the inflationary impact of global supply-chain pressures in the Philippines and select East Asian neighbors. We find that supply-chain disruptions are followed by sizable and statistically significant increases in headline inflation in the Philippines, Rep. of Korea, Thailand, and Singapore. Supply-chain shocks also have a considerable impact on the tradable segment of core inflation. Meanwhile, non-tradable inflation has a generally smaller, short-lived, and insignificant response to global supply-chain pressures reflecting the limited presence of second-round, indirect effects.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":100867,"journal":{"name":"Latin American Journal of Central Banking","volume":"6 1","pages":"Article 100141"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141415599","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Viviana Alfonso C , Steven Kamin , Fabrizio Zampolli
{"title":"Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) in Latin America and the Caribbean","authors":"Viviana Alfonso C , Steven Kamin , Fabrizio Zampolli","doi":"10.1016/j.latcb.2024.100140","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.latcb.2024.100140","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The pros and cons of CBDCs have been examined in numerous writings but much less research has focused on specific economies or regions. This paper attempts to fill that gap for the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) economies. It first examines the views of central banks in the region toward CBDCs, drawing on a BIS survey conducted in late 2020 and early 2021. It finds that a large share of LAC central banks are engaged in CBDC research, as in other regions, and that their interest is primarily centred around financial inclusion, efficiency, and safety of the domestic payments system. Second, the paper examines whether the engagement of LAC central banks with CBDCs can be explained by the structural characteristics of their economies. It finds higher engagement in countries with strong innovation, fast payment systems, high government effectiveness, high financial development, and strong interest in CBDCs by the public. LAC jurisdictions are generally weaker in these areas than in advanced economies but are broadly comparable to other EMDEs. Third, the paper identifies potential benefits of CBDCs that are particularly relevant for LAC economies: promotion of financial inclusion; reduction of informality; increasing the resilience of the payment system in the face of natural disasters; increasing competition in the payments system; and reducing the cost of cross-border payments. The paper also discusses the costs and risks of CBDCs but argues that these can be addressed through proper design and implementation. Finally, the paper reviews the design choices made by a number of central banks in the region and the associated implementation issues. Common features of CBDCs in use include a two-tier architecture, offline capabilities, restriction to be used only by residents, and safeguards for privacy, but they differ in their approach to ledger management.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":100867,"journal":{"name":"Latin American Journal of Central Banking","volume":"6 1","pages":"Article 100140"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141703986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The loan puzzle in Mexico","authors":"Luis Fernando Colunga-Ramos","doi":"10.1016/j.latcb.2024.100160","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.latcb.2024.100160","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Empirical evidence for advanced economies suggests that following a monetary tightening, commercial and industrial bank loans show a positive “puzzling response”. Since there is no wide evidence for the Mexican case, this paper analyzes the response of bank loans at the sectoral level after a monetary contraction. For this purpose, I estimate a structural VAR model with block exogeneity to identify a monetary shock for a small open economy. The results show evidence of firms’ loan puzzles during 2001-2019 characterized by an inflation-targeting regime in Mexico. Those short-lived loan puzzles are mainly observed in sectors with the lowest delinquency rates during the period of analysis. My finding of the loan puzzle at the aggregate level in a recent sample arises in a closed as well as in an open economy approach.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":100867,"journal":{"name":"Latin American Journal of Central Banking","volume":"6 1","pages":"Article 100160"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143099594","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Brazilian economy in the 2000’s: A tale of two recessions","authors":"Matheus Cardoso Leal, Márcio Issao Nakane","doi":"10.1016/j.latcb.2024.100162","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.latcb.2024.100162","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>During the 2008 Great Recession, the adoption of counter-cyclical economic policies made the Brazilian economy more resilient. However, a noteworthy shift occurred in 2014, marked by a deterioration in Brazil’s macroeconomic landscape, primarily driven by a worsening debt situation. Consequently, this downturn led to a decline in private investment, an upswing in unemployment rates, and negative growth rates over multiple quarters. To comprehend these macroeconomic fluctuations, this paper employs the Business Cycle Accounting (BCA) analytical framework, focusing on quarterly data spanning from 2002 to 2019. Among the key findings, the study reveals that the efficiency wedge played a pivotal role in replicating observed output movements during both recessions, with the labor wedge following closely. Investment and government consumption wedges were not significant business cycle drivers in the period.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":100867,"journal":{"name":"Latin American Journal of Central Banking","volume":"6 1","pages":"Article 100162"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143099584","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The effect of financial inclusion on economic and social indicators in Mexico","authors":"Guadalupe del Carmen Briano-Turrent","doi":"10.1016/j.latcb.2024.100161","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.latcb.2024.100161","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper analyses the relationship between financial inclusion and the economic and social development in Mexico. For this quantitative research, a study sample composed by 448 observations during the 2007–2020 was analyzed using fixed effect estimations with instrumental variables 2SLS. Empirical results show that access to banking services reduces poverty, informality and inequality and favor the human development and its components of health, standard of living and education. The banking penetration decreases poverty, informality and inequality and enhances the standard of living and education. An increase in the usage of banking services diminishes the poverty and informality and increases the human development. This research contributes to practical implications for policy makers to enhance financial inclusion and human development in Mexico.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":100867,"journal":{"name":"Latin American Journal of Central Banking","volume":"6 1","pages":"Article 100161"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143099670","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Olga Bespalova, Maximiliano Appendino, Rina Bhattacharya, Jean Francois Clevy Aguilar, Nan Geng, Takuji Komatsuzaki, Justin Lesniak, Weicheng Lian, Sandra Marcelino, Mauricio Villafuerte, Yorbol Yakhshilikov
{"title":"Crypto assets and CBDCs in Latin America and the Caribbean: Opportunities and risks","authors":"Olga Bespalova, Maximiliano Appendino, Rina Bhattacharya, Jean Francois Clevy Aguilar, Nan Geng, Takuji Komatsuzaki, Justin Lesniak, Weicheng Lian, Sandra Marcelino, Mauricio Villafuerte, Yorbol Yakhshilikov","doi":"10.1016/j.latcb.2024.100157","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.latcb.2024.100157","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>After providing a general overview of the nature, pros, and cons of crypto assets and CBDCs, this paper focuses on documenting their recent experience in LAC. The region records a high interest in unbacked crypto assets and stablecoins and its authorities’ policy responses have varied substantially, ranging from the introduction of Bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador to their prohibition in many other countries worried about their impact on financial stability, currency/asset substitution, tax evasion, corruption, and money laundering. This paper also describes briefly the results of a survey on CBDCs’ introduction plans and crypto assets regulation. Finally, this paper presents some general lessons and policy recommendations for the region on the regulation of crypto assets, digital currencies and cross-border payments, and on the potential introduction of CBDCs.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":100867,"journal":{"name":"Latin American Journal of Central Banking","volume":"6 2","pages":"Article 100157"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144167232","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Central bank digital currency in small open economies","authors":"Rong Fan , Todd B. Walker , Allan Wright","doi":"10.1016/j.latcb.2024.100151","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.latcb.2024.100151","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper examines how the introduction of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) impacts small open economies (SOE). We build a Two-Agent New Keynesian (TANK) model with financially constrained agents, where both cash and CBDC provide liquidity service. CBDC lowers the cost of carrying liquid assets but does not provides anonymity like cash. Our main results are: (i) CBDC always increases the welfare of financially unconstrained households; however, it increases the welfare of constrained households when the cost of carrying cash is high enough and when the government purchase level is sufficiently low; (ii) CBDC increases the fiscal income by bringing more agents out of the informal economy, improving fiscal sustainability; (iii) CBDC improves the terms of trade as it strengthens the domestic currency.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":100867,"journal":{"name":"Latin American Journal of Central Banking","volume":"6 2","pages":"Article 100151"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144167231","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Marcos Valli Jorge, A. M. Fasolo, Silvio Michael de Azevedo Costa
{"title":"Mitigating policies for pollutant emissions in a DSGE for the Brazilian economy","authors":"Marcos Valli Jorge, A. M. Fasolo, Silvio Michael de Azevedo Costa","doi":"10.1016/j.latcb.2024.100145","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.latcb.2024.100145","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":100867,"journal":{"name":"Latin American Journal of Central Banking","volume":"12 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141693248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}