In Guatemala there are substantial and growing imbalances in the housing market; at the same time, financial markets remain shallow and underdeveloped. The analytical framework applied in this paper starts by identifying the types of market failures responsible for the underdevelopment of the...

Access to finance remains a challenge for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Argentina. It is a particularly acute problem among newly created SMEs that have a scant credit record and frequently lack collateral. The authors of this paper carried out a pilot test of an innovative psychometric...

This paper surveys housing finance in Costa Rica, El Salvador and Panama. The development of a secondary mortgage-backed securities market in Costa Rica is very limited despite a broad legal framework, while in El Salvador it is nonexistent and in Panama has not grown due to high liquidity. In...

Housing for most Peruvians is improving but is still grossly inadequate. Nonetheless, public housing finance policies mainly involve programs that subsidize middle-income families and banks that lend to them. Research summarized in this paper indicates that financing will not be the main...

In 2001, Mexico introduced a comprehensive federal housing policy package. The results have been quantitatively impressive; however, there are qualitative concerns. It is also uncertain whether current subsidy programs have negative financial implications for participating mortgage issuers, as...

El sistema financiero de Honduras sufrió el impacto de la crisis financiera de 2009 con un deterioro de los indicadores de calidad de activos y de rentabilidad, que posteriormente experimentaron una recuperación en 2010. En el último año se ha podido notar una preferencia de los agentes por...

Los sistemas de garantía son instrumentos que tratan de mitigar las disfunciones que genera la exigencia de garantías a los empresarios en las operaciones crediticias. En este trabajo se diagnostican los efectos no deseados que provocan las reglas internacionales en el acceso al financiamiento...

After the 2007-2009 global financial crisis and previous financial crises in Latin America, the liquidity-risk exposure of banking systems is considered one of the most important vulnerabilities. At the same time, that exposure may also be the most mysterious of those vulnerabilities, as the...

Although financial development is good for long-term growth, not all countries pursue policies that render full financial development. This paper builds on an extensive political economy literature to construct a theoretical model showing that the intensity of opposition to financial development...