Latin America has a rich history of financial crises. However, it was relatively unharmed by the 2007-2009 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). This paper investigates why, and in particular the role of commodity prices and its institutional framework - in line with the fourth generation financial...

This article analyzes sovereign debt defaults in four Latin American countries — Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico — for the period 1870-2012. The impact of sovereign defaults on real GDP growth is generally short-lived, while the impact in terms of output losses is deep and lasts long....

We construct a continuous sovereign debt crisis index for four large Latin American countries for the period 1870-2012. Our sovereign debt crisis index is similar to the Exchange Market Pressure Index for currency crises, and the Money Market Pressure Index for banking crises. To obtain the...

Sovereign debt crises have regained attention since the recent crises in several European countries. This paper focuses on a particular aspect of the debt crisis literature: the impact of sovereign default on economic growth. Previous research agrees on the negative impact, but not on size and...