Argentine Banking Research Articles

Globalisation, Black Swans, and financialisation as social constructions: A Discursive Institutional Analysis of Banamex, Citibank, and Scotiabank in Argentina

ABSTRACT Despite over twenty years of political resistance, globalisation endures, both as a discourse and political project. While many works have established how discourses of globalisation serve to constrain and/or guide macroeconomic policy, the dynamic nexus that exists between microeconomic decision-making processes vis-à-vis macroeconomic conditions is a less explored matter. Epistemologically, this paper offers a means of gaining analytical purchase over the logics, motivations, and thought processes of international bankers – and the financial press, which chronicle their actions. This is accomplished via a rigorous discursive-content analysis that gauges how said agents understood globalisation, the role of finance, the state, and even how market sentiment was factored into their ontological worldview. Ultimately, the goal is to establish an historical and spatiotemporally heterogeneous analysis on if, how, and what ideas of globalisation and neoliberalism influenced/rationalized the financialization of Argentine banks during the 1990s and how these evolved en route to Argentina's 2001 collapse.

Secrets beneath the soil: recovery of fern spores as a strategy of biodiversity conservation in Punta Lara Nature Reserve (PLNR), Argentina

Abstract The recovery of soil spores is a strategy to strengthen in decline or disappeared populations from natural environments. In this work, we analyzed 25 soil samples extracted from a patch of gallery forest in an “albardón” of Punta Lara Reserve, Buenos Aires. The samples were distributed in 50 Petri dishes, 25 exposed to controlled temperature and light and another 25 kept in darkness. To contribute to the identification of gametophytes and sporophytes, spores of the local species were cultured in vitro. In 18 months of trial, the appearance of gametophytes and sporophytes was observed, in a greater proportion those belonging to a dominant species in the community: Doryopteris concolor. Numerous gametophytes and sporophytes from Gastoniella chaerophylla were also obtained, a taxon not found in the “albardón” for two years. The germination index (GI) was estimated and the morphological characteristics of the gametophytes and sporophytes were recorded. This is the first contribution to the knowledge of the spore banks in Argentina, in a protected area where several threats put at risk the survival of native species. The bases to implement methods of ex situ and in situ conservation of native ferns are provided.

Debt sustainability of the Argentine Republic: Problems and prospects

Subject. The article reveals the relationship between the increasing cost of servicing the current government debt and ensuring the debt sustainability of default economy, on the case of the Argentine Republic. Objectives. The study aims at conducting a comprehensive analysis of origins and mechanisms for resolving debt crises in the Argentine Republic. Methods. The study rests on methods of analysis, synthesis and extrapolation, using the database of the IMF, the Ministry of Economy, and the Central Bank of Argentina. Results. We discuss the approaches of the administration and the Central Bank of Argentina to the implementation of anti-crisis fiscal and monetary policy, reveal the details of Argentina's interaction with the IMF in providing assistance in the financial stabilization of the economy, show the economic consequences of excessive debt burden, present the data on the repayment of Argentina's public debt in the long run. The paper summarizes the distinctive features of the current debt of Argentina restructuring, including the increasing socio-economic and political risks. Conclusions. The distrust in debt securities and creditworthiness in the Argentine Republic increases the risk of serial default. The lack of the State's ability to provide financial support to the national corporate sector is reflected at the level of poverty, unemployment, and, as a result, it has an impact on the mood of the population, which threatens the intensity of riots that may spread outside the Argentine Republic.

Clase política y sector bancario en la Argentina de entreguerras: el caso del Banco Español y del Río de la Plata

Este trabajo analiza la relación entre la clase política y el sistema bancario argentino entre la primera y segunda guerras mundiales, a través del caso del Banco Español y del Río de la Plata. Se describe la muy íntima relación entre diversos políticos influyentes que recibieron un trato privilegiado de un establecimiento privado que a su vez dependía para su existencia de la ayuda pública. Esta fue una clara muestra de capitalismo de amigos, estudiada aquí a través de diversas fuentes, entre las que destaca documentación interna del banco.

Credit Scoring Applied to Special Case

The present work studies an bank actives in the loans with repayment through payroll deductions a employees of the state government. Those employees have legal job stability, so is very difficult that an employee is fired. Given both, job stability and the sure payment, the default probability is very low, but Argentine banking regulator requires that under certain circumstances a bank must provisioning (charge a loss) to debtor paying in a timely manner the debt contracted but delay pays of debt with other bank. This become very expensive for the bank, so, the bank want avoid give a loan to whose can fall in this situation. The bank requiered us to design a model that predict if a debtor will be reclassified during the next year. The bank also requires build a score system and pick a cutoff that reach a reclassified rate lesser than 0.045, but allowing high approval rate.

Robust Clustering of Banks in Argentina

The purpose of this paper is to classify and characterize 64 banks, active as of 2010 in Argentina, by means of robust techniques used on information gathered during the period 2001-2010. Based on the strategy criteria established in (Wang 2007) and (Werbin 2010), seven variables were selected. In agreement with bank theory, four “natural” clusters were obtained, named “Personal”, “Commercial”, “Typical” and “Other banks”. In order to understand this grouping, projection pursuit based robust principal component analysis was conducted on the whole set showing that essentially three variables can be attributed the formation of different clusters. In order to reveal each group inner structure, we used R package mclust to fit a finite Gaussian mixture to the data. This revealed approximately a similar component structure, granting a common principal components analysis as in (Boente and Rodrigues, 2002). This allowed us to identify three variables which suffice for grouping and characterizing each cluster. Boente’s influence measures were used to detect extreme cases in the common principal components analysis.

Liquidity Provision on Demand in the Argentine Banking System

ABSTRACTIn recent decades, liquidity provision on demand has experienced more growth than almost any other banking function. Banks have comparative advantages over other intermediaries for providing liquidity on demand because of their ability to raise funds through deposits. An overdraft facility is a product that provides liquidity on demand to firms and can affect investment levels. Using panel data for 70 Argentine banks between 1995 and 2015, we built an econometric model to analyze some determinants of the volume of bank-supplied overdrafts, focusing on the role of deposits. This article is focused on understanding how banks have financed their credit lines to firms and its evolution in the Argentinian banking system in the examined period. We found evidence of a strong relation between demand deposits and overdrafts supply. However, the features of this relationship are heterogeneous between different types of banks and were affected by the 2001 Crisis. This heterogeneity among banks could represent an inefficient liquidity provision.

Managing Monetary Policy and Financial Supervision in Argentina: Historical Analysis and Present Neoliberal Challenges—A Personal Account

This article traces the context in which this author served Argentina as both the chairman of the Central Bank of Argentina and former chairman of Securities and Exchange Commission of Argentina. As described, the efforts necessary for a country such as Argentina to achieve and maintain financial sovereignty are almost as great as the forces opposing such a possibility. While focusing on the specific case of Argentina and pertaining to a specific time in its history, this article offers insights that hopefully can lead to a better understanding of the global forces that condition the management of national economies in the contemporary world.

From scratch to efficiency gains after a financial crisis? A tale of a restructured banking system

We study the efficiency of the Argentine banking system after the 2001–2002 crisis. The financial system had to be restructured from scratch and recovered jointly with the economy, but its productivity and average cost levels have been stagnant since 2007. The analysis includes efficiency frontier estimations for retail banks and a comparison of subsamples for different categories of banks for the period 2005–15. We try to determine whether public banks are more efficient than private ones, whether privatized are more efficient than always private, as well as national versus foreign entities. Our findings show a modest average efficiency of the system and quite similar efficiency rankings for the different groups of banks. On average, public tend to be slightly more cost efficient than private, and national are slightly more efficient than foreign.

Usefulness of nucleic acid testing to reduce risk of hepatitis B virus transfusion-transmitted infection in Argentina: high rate of recent infections.

Results from 10-year experience using nucleic acid test (NAT) screening in a blood bank of Córdoba are presented, showing the first data on prevalence of recent hepatitis B virus (HBV) infections and occult HBV infections (OBIs) in Argentina. Molecular screening was performed by COBAS AmpliScreen human immunodeficiency virus Type 1 (HIV-1) test Version 1.5 and COBAS AmpliScreen hepatitis C virus (HCV) test Version 2.0 and COBAS TaqScreen MPX and MPX Version 2.0 test (Roche Molecular Systems). To characterize OBI, additional molecular and serologic assays were performed. As results of NAT, 0.075% of the donors (155/205,388) tested positive for HIV, 0.05% (106/205,388) for HCV, and 0.045% (76/168,215) for HBV. Donors who tested positive for HIV or HCV by NAT were also positive by serology. There was one of 33,643 donors recently infected with HBV. At time of donation, six of 76 (7.9%) donors with confirmed HBV infection presented virologic and serologic profiles consistent with OBI. By additional studies three were OBI, two were window period infections, and one remained unclassified. NAT contributed significantly to the reduction of the potential risk of HBV transmission with a frequency of one in 56,072, detecting three in 168,215 donors without serologic evidence of infection. NAT also detected three in 168,215 OBIs. The finding of high frequency of recent infections (1/33,643), unexpected for this country, highlights the need of promoting unified effective regulations that enforce the use of NAT in all blood banks in Argentina and points out the importance of assessing the risk of HBV transmission in blood banks of other countries considered to be low-endemic.

Historia de la creación de la banca central latinoamericana -El pretérito es la base de un presente prominente-

El dinero desempeña tres funciones principales: la primera es servir como medio de cambio, cuando lo utilizamos para comprar bienes y servicios. El trueque es muy ineficiente porque exige una coincidencia de necesidades y deseos entre oferentes y demandantes.La segunda función es la de servir como unidad de cuenta, es decir permite realizar fácilmente comparaciones de valor entre bienes, a través de los precios. La tercera función es como depósito de valor. No obstante, el dinero no es la única forma de “tener” riqueza (depósito de valor). Sin embargo el dinero en efectivo tiene la ventaja de que es difícil de “seguirle la pista” ya que es anónimo, pero la inflación hace que se pierda la riqueza.El dinero tiene un valor nominal superior al valor intrínseco de su contenido en metal o papel. Es por esta razón que el factor confianza (del latín fiducia) es la base para que funcione eficientemente un sistema monetario moderno. Esa necesaria confianza fue perdiéndose cuando la banca privada, que era la que emitía los valores fiduciarios (monedas y billetes), lo hacía sin tener ningún respaldo físico (de oro o plata) y en consecuencia le correspondió al Estado asumir la responsabilidad de restablecer esa confianza y credibilidad en el dinero. Por esto es necesaria la existencia y funcionamiento de la banca central.En esta investigación se relata la historia de la creación de la banca central Latinoamericana, para lo cual iniciaremos con una breve introducción para referirnos a la aparición, alrededor de 5.000 años atrás, de los primeros bancos. Describiremos lo ocurrido en Inglaterra y España con relación a la creación de los bancos centrales en esas naciones, por la influencia que tuvieron esos países en América Latina. Luego haremos un breve recuento de lo ocurrido entre los siglos XVII y XX, periodo en el cual aparece en el mundo la banca central. Finalmente abordaremos sobre la creación de los bancos centrales en Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Panamá y Perú. Terminaremos el ensayo con algunas conclusiones.

Technical Efficiency Analytics for the Public Banks in Argentina

Technical Efficiency Analytics for the Public Banks in Argentina

Kicking Away the Ladder, Too: Inside Central Banks

:Central banks are evolving institutions. In developed countries, particularly in Britain, central banks were used as instruments of the state to finance government and to promote economic development. However, once they went up the economic ladder, advanced economies kicked it to preclude developing countries from climbing it, too. It is in this context that the modern independent central bank, concerned with inflation targeting alone, which harkens back to the Victorian era, should be interpreted. This paper analyzes the recent evolution of the Argentine central bank in this broad historical perspective.

Productive Efficiency in the Banking Industry

The goal of this paper is to estimate the productive efficiency of Argentine banks. For this purpose, panel data of the universe of banks under the supervision of the Central Bank of the Republic of Argentina (BCRA) has been collected. In order to build the bank´s indicators, we used a database of 66 institutions, with annual information for the period 2009-2013. The sources of information were both the BCRA's web site, and the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange's web site. It has been selected an efficiency indicator ranging between 0 and 1, meaning the lowest and highest level of efficiency, respectively. The concept of efficiency used here is a relative one, because it considers a Bank's performance in relation to the behavior of the best players in the industry, being the latter the base of the industry benchmark or frontier. The results show that the mean efficiency of Argentine banks is 0,8277 in the specific period under consideration. The comparison with the results of other studies relating efficiency and competitive pressure, didn't allow us to infer that the Argentine banking industry experienced in the period a high level of competition.

Productive efficiency in the banking industry

The goal of this paper is to estimate the productive efficiency of Argentine banks. For this purpose, panel data of the universe of banks under the supervision of the Central Bank of the Republic of Argentina (BCRA) has been collected. In order to build the bank´s indicators, we used a database of 66 institutions, with annual information for the period 2009-2013. The sources of information were both the BCRA´s web site (www.bcra.gov.ar), and the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange´s web site (www.bolsar.com). It has been selected an efficiency indicator ranging between 0 and 1, meaning the lowest and highest level of efficiency, respectively. The concept of efficiency used here is a relative one, because it considers a Bank´s performance in relation to the behavior of the best players in the industry, being the latter the base of the industry benchmark or frontier. The results show that the mean efficiency of Argentine banks is 0,8277 in the specific period under consideration. The comparison with the results of other studies relating efficiency and competitive pressure, didn´t allow us to infer that the Argentine banking industry experienced in the period a high level of competition.

Eficiencia bancaria en Argentina. Comportamiento de los bancos entre 2005 y 2013

The aim of this paper is to analyse the evolution of the efficiency of certain Argentine banks for the period between 2005 and 2013. In this regard, it will seek to distinguish the factors that help explain this performance combining the data envelopment analysis (DEA) and the Malmquist productivity index (MPI). This allows to measure variations in productivity over time and, simultaneously, finding out its causes. The results show an improvement in overall productivity and technical efficiency for a large group of institutions analysed.

Ecologies of Investment: Crisis Histories and Brick Futures in Argentina

This article describes an ecological approach to investment in Argentina. This approach involves seeing investments as part of an emergent web of relations among constitutive and constituting parts. Such a sensibility is central to Argentine economic life, in which no investment is treated like any other. Care about attributing equivalence and attention to the relationality of investments was also central to how people worked to save their savings in the aftermath of the Argentine economic crisis of 2001. But Argentines are not just invested in dollars and pesos, bank accounts and cash; they are also invested in their economic past. As a result, the history of Argentine economic life is under a constant process of (re)narration, as Argentines reflect upon their rocky economic past in films, memoirs, comic monologues, and stories told among family and friends. I follow Argentines in attending to the past as a means to engage current ecologies of investment, paying particular attention to the history of currency and banking in Argentina, which together helped produce a boom in real estate investment in the years following the crisis. I also suggest that thinking ecologically about investments can be useful for anthropologists who are compelled to look beyond global descriptions of the economy.

A Proposal of Monetary Reform for Argentina: Flexible Dollarization and Free Banking

Argentina’s economy and monetary institutions are, once again, experiencing a serious crisis. In this document, we propose a monetary reform for Argentina that consists of flexible dollarization plus a free banking regime. By flexible dollarization, we mean that the peso should be replaced with the U.S. dollar as a first step, but the market should have the freedom to interact with any selected currency. Therefore, the country does not become attached the U.S. dollar; on the contrary, it becomes a free currency country. By free banking, we mean giving financial institutions permission to issue their own banknotes convertible into U.S. dollars or any other currency or commodity of their choice.It should be noted that the problems of the Argentine economy go beyond those of monetary policy. This proposal should not be understood as a sufficient reform to fix the Argentinean economy but as a necessary one. This proposal should also not be understood as a monetary panacea but as a monetary framework that is still superior to one provided by the Argentine central bank BCRA and Argentine policy makers to their country.

Impact of Debt-Equity Ratio on the Corporate Governance of Banks in Argentina

The paper discusses the concepts of debt-equity and corporate governance. It discuss how an optimal debt-equity ratio can help in better corporate governance of banks. Special reference is made to the impact of debt-equity ratio on the corporate governance of banks in Argentina. It concludes by stating how the difference in the debt-equity ratios of banks and other organisations, warrants different corporate governance norms in banks.

Net interest margins and firm performance in developing countries

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the relationship between performance and some macro and micro variables in the Argentine commercial banking industry. Included are the profitability and interest variables; return on assets (ROA) and net interest margin (NIM) over the period of 1994 to 2011.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical construct is guided by recent theories of banking performance that employ an industrial organization framework and two dependent variables (with identical control variables) to assure robustness and comparability in findings. The variables for the panel estimated generalized least square (panel EGLS) are constructed using income statements of 62 commercial banks (firm‐level data) as well as a number of industry‐specific and macroeconomic indicators.FindingsFactors such as expense management (operating cost efficiency/inefficiency), leverage and liquidity appear to be important forces behind the net interest margins (NIM) and profits (ROA) in the Argentine banking industry. Higher return on assets (ROA) is associated with banks carrying less leverage and therefore displaying a lower ratio of debt to total assets. Higher interest margin (NIM) is associated with higher operating expenses. Regarding the macroeconomic variables, inflation negatively affects profitability but is positively and significantly related to net interest margin. Banking environment has a positive effect on performance, reflecting the complementarity between banking performance and stock market capitalization.Originality/valueThe paper's value lies in showing that a firm's specific variables reveal better insights when analyzed in relation to banking environment. Indirectly, some of the value of this work lies in highlighting the Central Bank's accommodative monetary policy that has been driving Argentina's economic recovery and credit boom arising in an inflationary environment.