This paper focuses on some of the macroeconomic risks that lie ahead for Latin America. The discussion is informed by my work on crises and capital flows and their macroeconomic consequences. The trends and initial conditions that allowed the region to weather the global economic storm of...

In this note, we attempt to place the question of how we got to the global financial crisis that began as the US Subprime debacle in the summer of 2007 in the context of an international and historical comparative setting. It is of some poignancy that the “we” here refers to the wealthiest...

The standard pattern: capital flows into the new “hot” nation, but then stop or reverses forcing painful adjustment. This column presents research based on such episodes from 181 nations during 1980-2007 and for a subset of 66 nations for the 1960-2007 period. If the pattern of the past few...

We highlight in this note how an application of a similar estimation approach as ours to Colombian data for a more recent period following financial and capital account liberalization may find that the money supply is "endogenous" (i.e. demand-determined as long as the exchange rate is heavily...

Financial crises are historically associated with the “4 deadly D’s”: Sharp economic downturns follow banking crises; with government revenues dragged down, fiscal deficits worsen; deficits lead to debt; as debt piles up rating downgrades follow. For the most fortunate countries, the...

This paper has addressed the following questions: Do sovereign credit ratings systematically help predict currency and banking crises? If not, why not? What needs to change? What is the behavior of credit ratings following the crises? Are there important differences in the behavior of credit...

I appreciate the opportunity to discuss this paper by Ricardo Caballero, Emmanuel Farhi, and Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas. This paper was described to me as a mix of theoretical and empirical work that attempts a hat trick: explaining the joint combination of global imbalances, the deflation of the...

Policymakers would do well to bear in mind the seven lessons that emerge from this overview of modern hyperinflations. Hyperinflations seldom materialize overnight and are usually preceded by a protracted period of high and variable inflation.Stabilization may take years if fiscal policies are...

In the early 1990s capital flows to the Asian economies were dominated by FDI. By contrast, Latin America was attracting little FDI and a large share of its inflows were either short-term or portfolio and viewed as “hot money.” These differences gave rise to the view that Latin America was...

In this short note we further discuss the role of macroeconomic policies to deal with surges in capital inflows. Primarily policies aimed at avoiding financial crises or an overvaluation of the real exchange rate.