There is a widespread belief that inflation-linked bonds are a direct source of information about inflation expectations. In this paper we address this issue by analyzing the relationship between break-even inflation (the difference between nominal and real yields) and future inflation. The...

This paper tests whether diversification of the credit portfolio at the bank level is associated to better performance and lower risk. We employ a new high frequency (monthly) panel data constructed for the Brazilian banking system with information at the bank level for loans by economic sector....

Periods of Financial Stability are associated to low bank efficiency and high non-performing loans in credit portfolios. Therefore, this paper studies the relationship between bank efficiency and non-performing loans. To evaluate the bank efficiency, we employ a Data Envelopment Analysis. We...

This paper offers additional insights on the relationship between interest rates and business cycles in Brazil. First, I document that Brazilian interest rates are very volatile, counter-cyclical and positively correlated with net exports, as observed in other emerging economies. Next, I present...

We explore the structure and dynamics of interbank exposures in Brazil using a unique data set of all mutual exposures of financial institutions in Brazil, as well as their capital reserves, at various periods in 2007 and 2008. We show that the network of exposures can be adequately modeled as a...

This paper examines the relation between the degree of firms’ financial constraint and the observed rise in the cost of bank financing during the global financial crisis of 2008. It introduces a new measure of financial constraint: the lending rate paid by each firm on working capital loans....

In the context of the implementation of the Basel II accord, this paper analyzes the cyclical behavior of Brazilian bank capital under the current regulation. We use an unbalanced panel data of banks operating in Brazil between 2003 and 2008 to estimate an equation of the bank economic capital....

In this work we compare the interest rate forecasting performance using a broad class of linear models. The models are estimated through a MCMC procedure with data from the US and Brazilian markets. We show that a simple parametric specification has the best predictive power, but it does not...

In spite of early skepticism on the merits of floating exchange rate regimes in emerging markets, 8 of the 25 largest countries in this group have now had a floating exchange rate regime for more than a decade. Using parsimonious VAR specifications covering the period of floating exchange rates,...

This note shows that the unbiasedness and the weak rationality hypotheses are not rejected for the inflation forecasts surveyed by the Central Bank when the forecast horizon is one month. However, as in other countries, a clear pattern of auto-correlation of forecast errors is found....