All severe crises have required a reformulation of the International Financial Architecture (IFA). The G20, abruptly turned into a discussion and action forum to cope with the crisis, focused its work on two areas: first, the coordination of the macroeconomic policies to come out of the crisis...

The purpose of this document is to prove that the establishment in Argentina of regulations and records for exchange market transactions has a positive externality with respect to the prevention and control of asset laundering and potential terrorist financing, thus making this type of criminal...

Recent cross-country empirical evidence indicates that the money-prices relationship depends on the average rate of inflation. This relationship is strong in economies with high inflation, but weakens under low inflation. Based on these findings, we study the dependence of the money-prices...

The change in regime that came about in Argentine by 2001 provides an opportunity to explore the behaviour of economic agents in a context of changes in the incentives structure, and to consider the way in which their characteristics influenced the observed behaviours. We explore – by tapping...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze, for the first time, the characteristics of non-performing loans in the Argentine banking system in the period 1999-2005, focusing on loans to companies. These are the main findings: (1) the percentage of non-performing loans is closely related to the...

In this paper a bank faces excess demand in the loan market, can sort loan applicants by an observable measure of quality, and faces a small but positive probability of default. The bank uses two policies to allocate credit: (i) tighten restrictions on loan quality; (ii) limit the number of...

The impact of the business cycle on banks’ internally generated cash flow is an important driver in the pro-cyclical dynamics of the traditional banking business and yet the issue has been understated in the discussion on counter-cyclical regulations. Considerable attention has been given to...

The starting point of any policy decision tending to promote long-term bank financing is that it is scarce and that its provision is important for economic development. In the case of Argentina, in December 2005, long-term bank financing accounted for approximately 8.85% of GDP for total loans...

This paper aims at identifying the underlying reasons for substantial accumulation of foreign reserves, a strategy currently followed by a large number of countries. To this end, it first studies international liquidity conditions and individual country demand for reserves. It then analyses...

Monetary policymaking requires an adequate appraisal of price dynamics and reliable forecasts for short and medium term inflation. Since the relevant inflation for monetary policy purpose may not be adequately measured by conventional consumer price indexes, there is a need for core inflation...