During world financial crises in 1994 and 1998, most Latin American countries suffered severe contagion. But from the crisis of 2001 onward the amounts of contagion those countries suffered was less. This paper is a preliminary discussion of how several Latin American countries protected...

I document a beneficial effect of the government's participation in product markets. Exploiting the 2008-09 financial crisis as a natural experiment, I show that federal procurement contracts insulate government contractors' performance from the crisis. By 2009, government contractors had 19%...