Financial liberalization has not lived up to expectations, at least as far as interest rate spreads are concerned. Over the past decade, many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have reformed their financial sectors and reaped major economic benefits as a result. However, the...

Over the last decade, many countries in Latin America have eliminated interest rate ceilings, reduced reserve requirements, and stopped direct credit controls. These market-oriented reforms have encouraged financial deepening, thereby producing considerable economic benefits to the countries....

The author sets out a methodology for analyzing episodes of high real interest rates in emerging market economies. He reviews the literature on what determines spreads in deposit rates and loan rates. Then he links the causes of interest rate spreads by explicitly modeling the incentive effect...

Este trabajo analiza el efecto de los trastornos en las condiciones de intercambio sobre una economía productiva; donde el capital es importado y el producto físico se ajusta lentamente a dichos cambios. El análisis muestra que, cuando el capital es importado y el deterioro en los términos de...

The study of bank interest rate spreads is central to our understanding of the process of financial intermediation. Data limitations generally restrict empirical analyses to interest rate spreads that are constructed from bank income statements and balance sheets. In this paper we make use of a...

The literature on safety nets has become technically more precise by drawing on advances in contract theory and optimal governance structure. This paper begins with a treatment of some aspects of the theory. The author's approach draws more on institutional economics, and more precisely on the...

This paper provides a narrative account of the 1980s Chilean banking crisis. The Chilean crisis saw the nationalization of the two largest financial conglomerates and resulted in more than half of the financial system’s assets and liabilities falling under direct control of the government. The...

The author sets out a methodology for analyzing episodes of high real interest rates in emerging market economies. He reviews the literature on what determines spreads in deposit rates and loan rates. Then he links the causes of interest rate spreads by explicitly modeling the incentive effect...