I use a natural experiment to estimate the effect that a Lender of Last Resort has on banks’ liquidity demand. In December 1996 Argentina’s Central Bank signed with a group of international banks a contingent credit line agreement that enhanced its ability to act as a LLR. I run...

I extend the traditional Diamond Dybvig framework with aggregate liquidity shocks to small open economies. Currency board may imply perfect risk sharing (with perfect credit markets), contrary to Chang and Velasco’s …ndings (2000). With interim-date borrowing constraints and …xed exchange...

Loan rates in Argentina are high. The objective of this work is to test if market power is one of the causes of these levels of interest rates and to measure its effects. For that purpose we work with data of the period 1994-1999. The tests indicate that there is market power in the peso...