Sebastian Sosa

Evridiki Tsounta

Miss. Hye S Kim

A favorable external environment coupled with prudent policies fostered output growth in most of Latin America during the last decade. But, what were the drivers of this strong growth performance from the supply side and will this momentum be sustainable in the years ahead? We address these questions by identifying the proximate causes of the recent high GDP growth and estimating potential growth rates for the period ahead for a large group of Latin American countries based on standard (Solow-style) growth accounting methodologies. We find that factor accumulation (especially labor), rather than growth in total factor productivity (TFP), remains the main driver of GDP growth. Moving forward, given the expected moderation of capital accumulation and some natural constraints on labor, the strong growth momentum is unlikely to be sustainable unless TFP performance improves significantly.

Is the Growth Momentum in Latin America Sustainable?

Gustavo Adler

Marie-Louise Djigbenou

We study the dynamic response of gross capital flows in emerging market economies to different global financial shocks, using a panel vector-autoregressive (PVAR) setting. Our focus lies primarily on the potentially stabilizing role played by domestic investors in offsetting the response of foreign investors to global shocks. We find evidence of such role, but its existence and magnitude depend on the nature of the shock. Local investors play a meaningful stabilizing role in the face of global uncertainty shocks, as well as shocks to long-term U.S. interest rates. However, while in the former case, sizeable asset repatriation largely offsets the retrenchment of non-residents, in the latter case the extent of the offsetting is much more limited. Meanwhile, residents and non-resident behave alike in response to short-term U.S. interest rate shocks, pulling capital away from emerging markets, although magnitudes are not economically significant. The results shed light on the potential impact of the Fed’s QE tapering on emerging market economies.

Sebastian Sosa

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