Search

This article examines economic reforms in Ecuador during the 1990s, which was marred by political chaos, economic uncertainty, regional infighting, and social rifts. The author argues that reforms in Ecuador have failed due to reckless and incomplete implementation that resulted in dangerous macroeconomic imbalances, the failure of public sector economic reforms caused the country's exchange rate anchor to be vulnerable to external shocks, increased the cost of capital, and created a liquidity squeeze.

Issues related to the history of Brazil's private and state banks during the 20th century are examined, focusing on the influence of inflation and an analysis of the post-crisis, emerging banking system in the 21st century.

Foreign investment played an insignificant role in the growth of the Brazilian economy from 1960-1995, with domestic investment of greater importance during the period. Even so, Brazil witnessed a surge in foreign direct investment in the 1990s due to macroeconomic stability and pro-market structural reforms that drew a favorable response from international investors. The government's open-minded policies toward foreign capital and its privatization program also contributed to Brazil's popularity as a foreign investment destination, as did its leadership role in Mercosul and its location. Foreign capital served to expand domestic investment, however, as increased direct foreign investment gave rise to more opportunities for local production, which, in turn, encouraged domestic investment.

This paper examines the use of the exchange rate as a nominal anchor for achieving price stability in Latin America. It will explore the impact of exchange rate anchoring on the real sector by analyzing five stabilization programs. The paper will identify conditions that make exchange rate-based stabilization successful and those that lead to its failure. It will also demonstrate that while the income effect can be instrumental in describing consumption booms associated with exchange rate-based stabilizations, the popular view based on the credibility hypothesis fails to explain key events associated with such programs. Key words - inflation, exchange rates, Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico

This paper analyzes the impact on economic growth of public and private investment spending in Mexico. Public investment expenditures had a positive and significant effect on output growth. Public investment's impact on economic growth was statistically identical to the impact of private capital spending. The contribution of public investment to output expansion came at the expense of private investment as indicating a significant crowding out effect., I. INTRODUCTION The 1980s debt crisis brought an end to more than four decades of state-led growth in Latin America. Cash-strapped governments of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico no longer [...]

Leading economic indicators, along with the econometrics of latent variables,are employed to forecast turning points of the US industrial production variable. Used in a dichotomous response regression model, leading indicators were found to be able to accurately forecast every turning point for the index of industrial production of the Federal Reserve Board from 1967 to 1990.

The experiences of Argentina and Brazil in trying to achieve economic stabilization provide a useful illustration of what is likely to happen in the former Soviet Union, since problems such as rapid inflation and high budget deficits have been common to all three countries. Events in Argentina and Brazil illustrate the failure of heterodox policies involving price, wage and exchange rate freezes in dealing with the underlying causes of economic instability. However, the orthodox monetary and fiscal policies needed to achieve economic stabilization are unlikely to be acceptable to the Soviet people.

Since the early 1980s, Ecuador has increasingly adopted a pro-free trade posture and has removed most restrictions on its capital account. Foreign capital, however, has not penetrated key sectors of the economy as the privatization drive has stalled and financial markets have remained weak. The combination of open capital accounts and meager foreign capital inflows has not proven particularly beneficial to Ecuador. Specifically, some aspects of the internationalization of capital such as offshore banking have created significant limitations for the conduct of monetary and exchange rate policy and have added to the vulnerability of the country in the face of economic crises. These negative externalities of cross-border short-term capital movements are not balanced by inflows of long-term foreign capital. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this study, time series analysts is applied to the problem of forecasting state income tax receipts. The data series is of special interest since it exhibits a strong trend with a high multiplicative seasonal component. An appropriate model is identified by simultaneous estimation of the parameters of the power transformation and the ARMA model using the Schwarz (1978) Bayesian information criterion. The forecasting performance of the time series model obtained from this procedure is compared with alternative time series and regression models. The study illustrates how an information criterion can be employed for identifying time series models that require a power transformation, as exemplified by state tax receipts. It also establishes time series analysis as a viable technique for forecasting state tax receipts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]