IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iie/pbrief/pb02-07.html

Is Brazil Next?

Author

Listed:
  • John Williamson

    (Peterson Institute for International Economics)

Abstract

Until the IMF package on August 7, the financial markets showed great concern that Brazil might follow Russia, Ecuador, the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries, and Argentina in defaulting on its public debt. The yield spread of Brazilian debt over US Treasury securities ("Brazil risk") rose above 2,000 basis points in July 2002, on somedays higher than that of Nigerian debt, and second only to Argentina. One of my colleagues, Morris Goldstein, publicly estimated the probability of a Brazilian debt restructuring before the end of 2003 to be as high as 70 percent. After that (though not necessarily as a consequence!) the Brazilian real depreciated a lot more and Brazil risk rose much more. The questions addressed in this brief are whether this pessimism about the prospects of Brazil was justified, and whether the new IMF program announced on August 7, 2002, promises to bring these fears to an end once and for all.

Suggested Citation

  • John Williamson, 2002. "Is Brazil Next?," Policy Briefs PB02-07, Peterson Institute for International Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:iie:pbrief:pb02-07
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.piie.com/publications/policy-briefs/brazil-next
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Krugman, Paul, 1979. "A Model of Balance-of-Payments Crises," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 11(3), pages 311-325, August.
    2. Carlo Ambrogio Favero & Francesco Giavazzi, "undated". "Why are Brazil´s Interest Rates so High?," Working Papers 224, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    3. Maurice Obstfeld, 1985. "Floating Exchange Rates: Experience and Prospects," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 16(2), pages 369-464.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. William R. Cline, 2003. "Restoring economic growth in Argentina," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3158, The World Bank.
    2. Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff & Miguel A. Savastano, 2003. "Debt Intolerance," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 34(1), pages 1-74.
    3. Morris Goldstein, 2003. "Debt Sustainability, Brazil, and the IMF," Working Paper Series WP03-1, Peterson Institute for International Economics.
    4. Canuto, Otaviano & Pinto, Brian & Prasad, Mona, 2012. "Orderly sovereign debt restructuring : missing in action !," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6054, The World Bank.
    5. Zhang, Lei & Marcus Miller & Kannika Thampanishvong, 2003. "Learning to Forget? Contagion and Political Risk in Brazil," Royal Economic Society Annual Conference 2003 227, Royal Economic Society.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Maurice Obstfeld, 1995. "Intenational Currency Experience: New Lessons and Lessons Relearned," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 26(1, 25th A), pages 119-220.
    2. repec:onb:oenbwp:y::i:25:b:1 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Maurice Obstfeld & Kenneth Rogoff, 1995. "The Mirage of Fixed Exchange Rates," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(4), pages 73-96, Fall.
    4. Axel A. Weber, 1998. "Sources of Currency Crises: An Empirical Analysis," Working Papers 25, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank).
    5. Ortiz-Zarco, Ruth & Ortiz-Zarco, Eusebio, 2016. "Impacto del desarrollo del sistema financiero en el comercio de los países que integran la OCDE," Panorama Económico, Escuela Superior de Economía, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, vol. 0(44), pages 35-62, primer se.
    6. Edward J. Kane, 2012. "Ethical Failures in Regulating and Supervising the Pursuit of Safety Net Subsidies," Chapters, in: Kern Alexander & Rahul Dhumale (ed.), Research Handbook on International Financial Regulation, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Guillermo A. Calvo, 2008. "Crises in Emerging Markets Economies: A Global Perspective," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Kevin Cowan & Sebastián Edwards & Rodrigo O. Valdés & Norman Loayza (Series Editor) & Klaus Schmidt- (ed.),Current Account and External Financing, edition 1, volume 12, chapter 3, pages 085-115, Central Bank of Chile.
    8. Scott, Andrew & Uhlig, Harald, 1999. "Fickle investors: An impediment to growth?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(7), pages 1345-1370, June.
    9. Kang, Hyunju, 2013. "Behind the scenes of abandoning a fixed exchange rate regime," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 3145-3156.
    10. Chanelle Duley & Prasanna Gai, 2020. "When the penny doesn't drop - Macroeconomic tail risk and currency crises," National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) Discussion Papers 520, National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
    11. Prof.Dr. Cevat GERNI & Doc.Dr. O. Selcuk EMSEN & Dr. M. Kemal DEGER, 2005. "Erken Uyari Sistemlerý Yoluyla Turkiye’Deki Ekonomik Krizlerin Analizi," Istanbul University Econometrics and Statistics e-Journal, Department of Econometrics, Faculty of Economics, Istanbul University, vol. 2(1), pages 39-62, November.
    12. Stijn Claessens & M. Ayhan Kose, 2013. "Financial Crises: Explanations, Types and Implications," CAMA Working Papers 2013-06, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    13. Enisse Kharroubi, 2004. "Macroeconomic Volatility and endogenous debt maturity choice," Money Macro and Finance (MMF) Research Group Conference 2004 22, Money Macro and Finance Research Group.
    14. Müller-Plantenberg, Nikolas A., 2010. "Balance of payments accounting and exchange rate dynamics," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 46-63, January.
    15. repec:rza:wpaper:044 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Caputo, Rodrigo, 2015. "Persistent real misalignments and the role of the exchange rate regime," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 112-116.
    17. Uribe, Martin, 2006. "A fiscal theory of sovereign risk," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(8), pages 1857-1875, November.
    18. Mohammad Karimi & Marcel‐Cristian Voia, 2019. "Empirics of currency crises: A duration analysis approach," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(3), pages 428-449, July.
    19. Opiela, Timothy P., 2004. "Was there an implicit full guarantee at financial institutions in Thailand? Evidence of risk pricing by depositors," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 519-541, September.
    20. Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira & Lauro Gonzalez & Cláudio Lucinda, 2008. "Crises financeiras nos anos 1990 e poupança externa [Financial crises of the 1990s and current account deficits]," Nova Economia, Economics Department, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Brazil), vol. 18(3), pages 327-357, September.
    21. Garg, Bhavesh & Prabheesh, K.P., 2021. "Testing the intertemporal sustainability of current account in the presence of endogenous structural breaks: Evidence from the top deficit countries," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 365-379.
    22. Marcel Fratzscher, 2003. "On currency crises and contagion," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(2), pages 109-129.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iie:pbrief:pb02-07. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peterson Institute webmaster (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iieeeus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.