In the last decade, a group of Latin American countries (Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay) experienced a gradual, yet sustained decline in financial dollarization. This paper documents the stylized facts and uses a standard VAR approach to examine the drivers of both deposit and credit...

Commodity-exporting countries have significantly benefited from the commodity price boom of recent years. At the current juncture, however, uncertain global economic prospects have raised questions about their vulnerability to a sharp fall in commodity prices and the policies that can shield it...

Highly favorable external conditions have helped Latin America strengthen its economic fundamentals over the last decade. But, has the region built enough buffers to guard itself from a weakening of the external environment? This paper addresses this question by developing a simple framework...

A favorable external environment coupled with prudent policies fostered output growth inmost of Latin America during the last decade. But, what were the drivers of this strong growthperformance from the supply side and will this momentum be sustainable in the years ahead?We address these...

This paper estimates neutral real interest rate (NRIR) ranges for 10 Latin American countries that either have full-fledged inflation targeting regimes in place or have recently adopted them, using an array of methodologies commonly used in the literature. We find that NRIRs have declined in the...

This paper estimates neutral real interest rate (NRIR) ranges for 10 Latin American countries that either have full-fledged inflation targeting regimes in place or have recently adopted them, using an array of methodologies commonly used in the literature. We find that NRIRs have declined in the...

Latin America's central banks have made substantial progress towards delivering an environment of price stability that is supportive of sustainable economic growth. We review these achievements, and discuss remaining challenges facing central banking in the region. Where inflation remains high...