The Mexican peso crisis

Includes bibliography

The employment situation in Latin America and the Caribbean: Crisis, stabilization and reactivation: performance of the labour market in 2009

Following a five-year period during which economic and social performance in Latin America and the Caribbean surpassed anything seen in recent decades, the global economic and financial crisis not only hurt macroeconomic variables but also impacted heavily on labour markets in the region’s countries. Between 2003 and 2008 employment rates had risen considerably, especially in the formal sector, but the crisis spelled a reversal of this trend. Nevertheless, the region was better prepared than it had been in previous crises, since it had achieved a sound fiscal footing, a good level of international reserves and low rates of inflation. This meant that the authorities had the space to implement countercyclical policies on both fiscal and monetary levels. Be this as it may, faced with the worst global crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, these measures could only attenuate the impact on the region’s economies —they could not prevent it altogether. Furthermore, the crisis struck with notable differences among subregions and countries depending on the nature of their trade integration, and not all the countries had the fiscal space to implement vigorous countercyclical policies. As discussed in this third ECLAC/ILO bulletin, the crisis did less damage to the region’s labour markets than had been feared at the beginning of last year, thanks to the implementation of public policies geared towards employment, as reviewed in the two previous bulletins. This bulletin offers an additional analysis from the perspective of gender equality. Moreover, some countries in the region, notably Brazil, managed to rapidly stabilize and revive economic growth, with positive effects on labour variables. The fact remains, however, that millions in Latin America and the Caribbean lost their jobs or were obliged to accept more poorly paid employment in more precarious conditions. The macroeconomic data indicate that recovery is under way and is stronger and occurring more rapidly than foreseen one year ago. In fact, regional growth in 2010 may well exceed the 4.1% forecast at the end of 2009. Consequently, although the unemployment rate may be expected to record a modest drop, it may not return to pre-crisis levels. The upturn is taking many different forms in the countries of the region. In some, especially in South America, recovery has benefited from the buoyancy of the Asian economies, whose demand for natural resources has driven large increases in exports, in terms of both volume and price. Countries whose economies are closely tied to the United States economy are benefiting from the recovery there, albeit more slowly and with a certain lag. Conversely, some countries are still suffering from major disequilibria, which are hampering their economic reactivation. Lastly, Chile and Haiti were both victims of devastating earthquakes early in the year and are therefore facing additional challenges associated with reconstruction, on top of their efforts to sustain an economic upturn. Despite the relatively favourable outlook for regional growth in 2010, great uncertainty still surrounds the global economy’s recovery, which affects the region’s economic prospects over the longer term. The weakness of the recovery in some regions and the doubts about its sustainability in others, as well as shocks that have occurred in international financial markets, are warning signs which authorities need to monitor continuously because of the region’s close integration with the global economy. In addition, a return to growth does not directly or automatically mean higher employment rates —still less decent working conditions. Although some labour indicators have performed reasonably favourably since the end of last year, the countries still face daunting challenges in improving the labour market integration of millions in Latin America and the Caribbean who are not seeing the fruits of renewed growth. This is why it is important to learn the lessons arising from the policies implemented during the crisis to offset its impact on labour markets. With this third joint bulletin, ECLAC and ILO continue to pursue their objective of affording the region the information and analyses needed to face these challenges, as regards both trends in the region’s labour markets and the corresponding policy options.

Más allá de los controles de capital: regulación de los mercados de derivados en moneda extranjera en la República de Corea y el Brasil después de la crisis financiera mundial

En el marco de la gestión de los flujos de capital, algunas economías emergentes han afrontado, después de la crisis mundial, dilemas en términos de políticas económicas relacionados con las operaciones de instrumentos financieros, en un contexto de abundante liquidez actual en las economías avanzadas. Sin embargo, la regulación de los derivados en moneda extranjera en las economías emergentes no ha sido suficientemente tratada ni en la literatura, ni por las instituciones financieras. Aquí se analizan las medidas aplicadas en el Brasil y la República de Corea. Primero, se constata que la amplitud de las regulaciones a las operaciones de derivados en moneda extranjera depende de los agentes y del tipo de contrato. Segundo, se requiere una institucionalidad interna eficaz para la formulación y aplicación de regulaciones. Tercero, los países no debieran limitar su margen normativo mediante acuerdos multilaterales o bilaterales, y dejar espacio para la regulación financiera interna.

A concentração da indústria de frigoríficos e a crise da pecuária na região sudeste do Pará: uma abordagem multifacetada

O presente estudo analisa as raízes da crise de 2008 na pecuária paraense, enfocando o conflito entre pecuaristas e frigoríficos a partir de uma abordagem multifacetada. Tendo como hipótese inicial o desequilíbrio entre oferta e demanda de gado, o estudo está dividido em duas partes, onde, na primeira, é pesquisada a pecuária em si, quanto à discussão científica sobre a sua viabilidade na Amazônia e sua evolução recente no estado do Pará. Na segunda parte, trata-se da instalação da grande indústria de frigoríficos na Sudeste paraense, o aumento da capacidade de abate e o desequilíbrio com a oferta de gado bovino. No contexto desse desequilíbrio, são avaliadas tanto as causas externas, tais como a exportação de gado vivo e a crise financeira internacional, quanto domésticas, em particular a atuação das organizações não governamentais, das políticas públicas e do relacionamento entre pecuaristas e frigoríficos. O estudo conclui que a crise foi causada por um conjunto de fatores estruturais e conjunturais. Os fatores conjunturais inserem-se no contexto da inserção da pecuária paraense no mercado internacional, afetado pela crise financeira internacional, pela exportação de bovinos vivos e pela política industrial do Governo Federal. Os fatores estruturais são aqueles relacionados à estrutura fundiária concentrada e ao modelo de pecuária extensiva instalada na região, ainda marcado por infrações das leis ambientais e trabalhistas, e pela relação de desconfiança entre pecuaristas e frigoríficos, onde o mercado ainda não foi capaz de criar uma estrutura de governança onde os agentes possam equacionar seus problemas.

O setor de venture capital, as startups e o empreendedorismo em Israel, nos anos recentes

Some of the factors that help to explain the Israeli success case on promoting high-tech start-ups backed by venture capital funds can be found in the risk-taking culture of the country, the vast technological know-how associated with the huge military development, the high offer of human intellectual capital due to the immigration processes, and finally also the FDI inflows, mainly from the United States. Even though, these factors would not have the same effects in the economy unless the right structures were founded by the public-private sectors partnerships for the high-tech industry development and the adaptation of the investment industry surpasses two of the deepest global financial crisis: the dot-com bubble in the 2000’s and the subprime in 2008

Interpretação da crise financeira mundial sob a perspectiva de David Harvey

Pós-graduação em Economia - FCLAR

A preservação da empresa diante da tutela do consumidor superendividado

Pós-graduação em Direito - FCHS

Programa Minha Casa Minha Vida: estratégia no enfrentamento da crise de 2008

This work aims to present an analysis of the Minha Casa Minha Vida, proposed by Lula's government in 2009, highlighting their main impacts for the country in the period following the international financial crisis of 2008, in addition to demonstrating the perception of different inserted agents in context. We argue that the Program implementation was a strategy for the country to overcome the crisis, moving the economy to stimulate consumption, investment and job creation. This work also analyzes the Lula government, responsible for program implementation, and seeks to show its characteristic points that led to the success of the Minha Casa Minha Vida. Finally, we demonstrate that the 2008 crisis has a side still little explored, that goes beyond the economic data that generated and can be regarded as the mainstream economic thinking crisis

The structure and resilience of financial market networks

Financial markets can be viewed as a highly complex evolving system that is very sensitive to economic instabilities. The complex organization of the market can be represented in a suitable fashion in terms of complex networks, which can be constructed from stock prices such that each pair of stocks is connected by a weighted edge that encodes the distance between them. In this work, we propose an approach to analyze the topological and dynamic evolution of financial networks based on the stock correlation matrices. An entropy-related measurement is adopted to quantify the robustness of the evolving financial market organization. It is verified that the network topological organization suffers strong variation during financial instabilities and the networks in such periods become less robust. A statistical robust regression model is proposed to quantity the relationship between the network structure and resilience. The obtained coefficients of such model indicate that the average shortest path length is the measurement most related to network resilience coefficient. This result indicates that a collective behavior is observed between stocks during financial crisis. More specifically, stocks tend to synchronize their price evolution, leading to a high correlation between pair of stock prices, which contributes to the increase in distance between them and, consequently, decrease the network resilience. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3683467]

The role of public opinions on recent Spanish emigration

[ES]Presentación de un informe sobre el debate social reflejado en los medios de comunicación españoles sobre el nuevo fenómeno de la emigración de jóvenes españoles al extranjero y su relación con la crisis económica internacional.

Econometric models of financial risks

The goal of this dissertation is to use statistical tools to analyze specific financial risks that have played dominant roles in the US financial crisis of 2008-2009. The first risk relates to the level of aggregate stress in the financial markets. I estimate the impact of financial stress on economic activity and monetary policy using structural VAR analysis. The second set of risks concerns the US housing market. There are in fact two prominent risks associated with a US mortgage, as borrowers can both prepay or default on a mortgage. I test the existence of unobservable heterogeneity in the borrower's decision to default or prepay on his mortgage by estimating a multinomial logit model with borrower-specific random coefficients.

Financial Development and Economic Growth: Time Series Evidence from Albania

The main objective of this thesis is to explore the short and long run causality patterns in the finance – growth nexus and finance-growth-trade nexus before and after the global financial crisis, in the case of Albania. To this end we use quarterly data on real GDP, 13 proxy measures for financial development and the trade openness indicator for the period 1998Q1 – 2013Q2 and 1998Q1-2008Q3. Causality patterns will be explored in a VAR-VECM framework. For this purpose we will proceed as follows: (i) testing for the integration order of the variables; (ii) cointegration analysis and (iii) performing Granger causality tests in a VAR-VECM framework. In the finance-growth nexus, empirical evidence suggests for a positive long run relationship between finance and economic growth, with causality running from financial development to economic growth. The global financial crisis seems to have not affected the causality direction in the finance and growth nexus, thus supporting the finance led growth hypothesis in the long run in the case of Albania. In the finance-growth-trade openness nexus, we found evidence for a positive long run relationship the variables, with causality direction depending on the proxy used for financial development. When the pre-crisis sample is considered, we find evidence for causality running from financial development and trade openness to economic growth. The global financial crisis seems to have affected somewhat the causality direction in the finance-growth-trade nexus, which has become sensible to the proxy used for financial development. On the short run, empirical evidence suggests for a clear unidirectional relationship between finance and growth, with causality mostly running from economic growth to financial development. When we consider the per-crisis sub sample results are mixed, depending on the proxy used for financial development. The same results are confirmed when trade openness is taken into account.

The Structure of Financial Supervision: Consolidation or Fragmentation for Financial Regulators?

This research was designed to answer the question of which direction the restructuring of financial regulators should take – consolidation or fragmentation. This research began by examining the need for financial regulation and its related costs. It then continued to describe what types of regulatory structures exist in the world; surveying the regulatory structures in 15 jurisdictions, comparing them and discussing their strengths and weaknesses. This research analyzed the possible regulatory structures using three methodological tools: Game-Theory, Institutional-Design, and Network-Effects. The incentives for regulatory action were examined in Chapter Four using game theory concepts. This chapter predicted how two regulators with overlapping supervisory mandates will behave in two different states of the world (where they can stand to benefit from regulating and where they stand to lose). The insights derived from the games described in this chapter were then used to analyze the different supervisory models that exist in the world. The problem of information-flow was discussed in Chapter Five using tools from institutional design. The idea is based on the need for the right kind of information to reach the hands of the decision maker in the shortest time possible in order to predict, mitigate or stop a financial crisis from occurring. Network effects and congestion in the context of financial regulation were discussed in Chapter Six which applied the literature referring to network effects in general in an attempt to conclude whether consolidating financial regulatory standards on a global level might also yield other positive network effects. Returning to the main research question, this research concluded that in general the fragmented model should be preferable to the consolidated model in most cases as it allows for greater diversity and information-flow. However, in cases in which close cooperation between two authorities is essential, the consolidated model should be used.

Electoral and Financial Bookkeeping: A Comparison of Pre-Electoral Pledges on Public Spending and the Outcome of Post-Electoral Budget Debates

In the wake of the financial crisis, budgetary discipline has taken centre stage in politics. More than ever a country's budget mirrors the true policy preferences of the legislative majority beyond all political discourse and cheap talk. The paper sheds light on mandate fulfilment in the field of public spending and fiscal policy in general. Based on previous work on pledge fulfilment in Switzerland the paper compares publicised pre-electoral statements of MPs on public spending and the development of the public finances with their post-electoral legislative behaviour during budget debates and votes. The findings of the paper confirm the results of the aforementioned earlier studies and point to the potential of budgetary statements for future mandate fulfilment research.