We use Mexican firm-level data to study the role of currency mismatches in exacerbating the negative effects of a devaluation in the corporate sector and to investigate what drives Mexican firms to borrow in foreign currency. Our results show that large firms and exporters tend to borrow more...

The authors study how agents in Latin America allocate their balances between dollar-denominated and domestic currency-denominated accounts. They empirically determine the causes of currency substitution, its significance in recent banking crises, and the link between currency substitution, and...

The authors study how agents in Latin America allocate their balances between dollar-denominated and domestic currency-denominated accounts. They empirically determine the causes of currency substitution, its significance in recent banking crises, and the link between currency substitution, and...

What causes currency substitution (foreign money substituting for domestic money)? What significance has it had in recent banking crises? And what is the relationship between currency conversion and macroeconomic volatility in Latin America?Gomis-Porqueras, Serrano, and Somuano study how agents...

This paper was prepared for the World Bank 4th Annual Contractual Savings Conference (Washington DC, April 2008) co-organized by Gregorio Impavido (gimpavido@imf.org). The article shows that account transfers among pension administrators in Mexico barely respond to price or return considerations...

In addition to the well-known policy recommendations of tight fiscal and monetary policies to curb inflation in traditional stabilization programs, the disinflation attempt in Mexico relied on the exchange rate as a nominal anchor. The exchange rate regimen evolved from a publicly announced rate...

The analysis focuses on the short-run dynamics of several macroeconomic variables and their relationship with the rate of inflation. The cyclical components of the variables are obtained through the Hodrick- Prescott filter. Contemporaneous correlations between the cyclical components show that...