A Decade Lost and Found_ Mexico and Chile in 1980s

A Decade Lost and Found_ Mexico and Chile in 1980s
A Decade Lost and Found_ Mexico and Chile in 1980s

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Review of Economic Dynamics5,166?2052002

doi:10.1006r redy.2001.0150,available online at http:r r https://www.360docs.net/doc/fa14485641.html, on

A Decade Lost and Found:Mexico and Chile in

the1980s1

Raphael Bergoeing

Centro de Econom?a Aplicada,Uni¨ersidad de Chile,Santiago,Chile

E-mail:raphaelb@dii.uchile.cl

Patrick J.Kehoe

Research Department,Federal Reser¨e Bank of Minneapolis,Minneapolis,Minnesota55480;

Department of Economics,Uni¨ersity of Minnesota,Minneapolis,Minnesota55455,

and National Bureau of Economic Research

E-mail:pkehoe@https://www.360docs.net/doc/fa14485641.html,

Timothy J.Kehoe2

Department of Economics,Uni¨ersity of Minnesota,Minneapolis,Minnesota55455,

and Research Department,Federal Reser¨e Bank of Minneapolis,Minneapolis,

Minnesota55480

E-mail:tkehoe@https://www.360docs.net/doc/fa14485641.html,

and

Raimundo Soto

′′

Instituto de Econom?a,Pontificia Uni¨ersidad Catolica de Chile,and

′′

Gerencia In¨estigacion Economica,Banco Central de Chile,Santiago,Chile

E-mail:rsoto@faceapuc.cl

Received September24,2001

1We thank the participants at the Minneapolis Fed’s‘‘Great Depressions of the Twentieth Century’’Conference?especially Pete Klenow?and participants at seminars at the Centre de Recerca de Economia de Benestar and the East?West Center for helpful comments.We

are also grateful to Edgardo Barandiaran,Bob Lucas,Rolf Luders,Jaime Serra-Puche,and especially Ed Prescott for useful discussions.Jim MacGee provided invaluable research assistance.Patrick Kehoe and Timothy Kehoe thank the National Science Foundation,and Raimundo Soto thanks the Banco Central de Chile for research support.The views expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis or the Federal Reserve System.

2Corresponding author.

166

1094-2025r02$35.00

?2002Elsevier Science

All rights reserved.

MEXICO AND CHILE IN THE1980s167 Chile and Mexico experienced severe economic crises in the early1980s.This

paper analyzes four possible explanations for why Chile recovered much faster

than Mexico https://www.360docs.net/doc/fa14485641.html,paring data from the two countries allows us to rule out a

monetarist explanation,an explanation based on falls in real wages and real

exchange rates,and a debt overhang https://www.360docs.net/doc/fa14485641.html,ing growth accounting,a

calibrated growth model,and economic theory,we conclude that the crucial

difference between the two countries was the earlier policy reforms in Chile that

generated faster productivity growth.The most crucial of these reforms were in

banking and bankruptcy procedures.Journal of Economic Literature Classification

Numbers:E32,N16,O40.?2002Elsevier Science

Key Words:Chile;Mexico;growth accounting;total factor productivity;depres-

sion.

1.INTRODUCTION

Chile and Mexico,like most of the other countries in Latin America, experienced severe economic crises in the early1980s that led to large drops in output.The paths of recovery from these crises differed markedly.

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Figure1shows that output per working-age15?64person in Chile returned to trend in about a decade and since then has grown even faster than trend.4In contrast,output in Mexico never fully recovered,and even two decades later is still30%below trend.For Mexico,like much of the rest of Latin America,the1980s were a‘‘lost decade’’?while for Chile they were a decade in which the economy began to grow spectacularly. This paper analyzes four possible explanations for the different paths of recovery in the two countries:

One explanation is the standard monetarist version that,short of induc-ing hyperinflation,the more rapidly a country in a severe recession expands its money supply,the faster it will recover.Although this story is not often proposed for the cases of Mexico and Chile,we examine it because it probably is the most common story for both the severity of and the slow recovery from depressions like that of the1930s in the United States.

?.

Another explanation is Corbo and Fischer’s1994account of rapid recovery.After the crisis,the Chilean government reversed its previous policy of wage indexation and allowed real wages to fall sharply.Corbo and

3Throughout we focus on output per working-age person?which is appropriate for our growth accounting and our model?rather than output per capita?which is not appropriate. Since both Mexico and Chile went through demographic transitions during1960?2000in which population growth rates fell sharply,the percentage of working-age persons in the total population changed,and these two measures of output do not move proportionately.

4To detrend the GDP data in Fig.1,we use a common,2%growth rate,which comes close to matching both Mexico’s and Chile’s average annual growth rates over our entire sample, 1960?2000.

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FIG.1.Real GDP per working-age15?64person,detrended by2%per year.

Fischer argue that this policy,together with policies that produced a rapid depreciation of the real exchange rate,fueled an export boom that was the principal cause of the rapid recovery.

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A third explanation is Sachs’s1989account of Mexico’s slow recovery. Sachs argues that Mexico’s large external debt led new investors to fear that most of the returns on any new investment would be taxed to pay off old loans.Hence,new investors were discouraged from investing,and both investment and output remained low.

A fourth explanation is based on the timing of structural reforms.Chile had undertaken a series of structural reforms in the1970s that set the stage for the successful performance of the1980s.In contrast,Mexico undertook these reforms only in the mid-1980s or later.We examine reforms in a number of areas:trade policy,fiscal policy,privatization, banking,and bankruptcy laws.

For each explanation we ask:Can it explain the different paths of recoveries in Chile and Mexico?We find that,although each of the first three explanations has some merit,none can account for the different paths of recovery:the standard monetarist version implies that Chile should have recovered more slowly than Mexico.The real wages and real exchange rate depreciation version implies that exports should have boomed even more in Mexico than in Chile?and they did?but Mexico stagnated while Chile grew.The debt overhang explanation implies that Chile should have stagnated even more than Mexico.

MEXICO AND CHILE IN THE1980s169 A comparison of data from Chile and Mexico allows us to rule out only one part of the structural reforms explanation?trade reforms.The timing of reforms is crucial if they are to drive the differences in economic performance of the two countries.During the decade following the crisis, Mexico’s trade grew faster than Chile’s,partly because Mexico was en-

?gaged in vigorous trade reform while Chile had already done so and,in

.

fact,had backtracked until the early1990s.By the mid-1990s,Mexico was just as open as Chile.

To shed light on the ability of the other reforms to account for the different paths,we turn to a growth accounting exercise.We ask:Were the differences in recoveries due mostly to differences in paths for factor inputs,like capital and labor,or were they due to differences in productiv-ity?We find that nearly all of the differences in the recoveries resulted from different paths of productivity.

From our growth accounting exercise,we conclude that the only reforms that are promising as explanations are those that economic theory dictates would show up primarily as differences in productivity,not those that would show up as differences in factor inputs.We use this implication to rule out fiscal reforms.These reforms primarily affect the incentives to accumulate capital and to work,not productivity.Moreover,the timing is not right for the fiscal reforms explanation:both countries reformed their tax systems by the mid-1980s,so these cannot account for the different paths.

We do find that fiscal reforms are important in explaining some features of the recoveries,just not the differences.In particular,when we use a calibrated growth model to quantitatively account for the recovery paths for Chile and Mexico,we find that a numerical experiment that incorpo-rates the different paths for productivity but leaves out the fiscal reforms misses badly.In the same model,however,a numerical experiment that keeps the different paths for productivity and adds an identical fiscal reform in both countries fares much better.

Our analysis suggests that it is differences in the timing of reforms in the other three areas?privatization,banking,and bankruptcy laws?that can account for the differences in economic performance between the two countries.Once again,however,the matter of timing is crucial:reforms in privatization were probably less important than those in banking and bankruptcy law precisely because Chile had already reaped the benefits of these reforms while Mexico was doing so during the period in which Mexico was stagnating and Chile was growing.The crucial differences between Mexico and Chile were in banking and bankruptcy laws:Chile was willing to pay the costs of reforming its banking system and of letting inefficient firms go bankrupt;Mexico was not.This is not to say that the reforms in Mexican trade policy,fiscal policy,and privatization were not

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important.The long period of crisis and stagnation that afflicted Mexico from1982through1995would have been far worse without them.

Two good general references for Mexico during the1980s and1990s are ?.?.

Aspe1993and Lustig1998;good general references for Chile are ?.?.?. Bosworth et al.1994,Corbo1985,and Edwards and Edwards1991.

?.

Edwards1996provides an interesting comparison of the1981?1983crisis in Chile with the1994?1995crisis in Mexico.

2.DIFFERENT REACTIONS TO SIMILAR

INITIAL CONDITIONS

What is striking about the economic performances of Mexico and Chile depicted in Fig.1is not so much the initial downturn in the early1980s, but the markedly different paths of recovery from these crises.In Chile, output returned to trend within a decade and since then has grown even faster than trend.In Mexico,output never recovered,and after almost two decades,in2000,it was still more than30%below trend.

Figure1uses indices of real GDP and is useful when thinking about movements in output relative to a base year.It is not useful in comparing levels of GDPs across countries.To do that,Fig.2plots levels of real GDP per working-age person in common units of1985dollars,using purchasing

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power parity adjustments.Appendix A provides descriptions and sources

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FIG.2.Purchasing power parity real GDP per working-age15?64person.

MEXICO AND CHILE IN THE1980s171

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for the data used in this paper.As the figure makes clear,in1980Mexico had a level of average income almost twice that of Chile.Over the next two decades Chile erased this gap.

In the early1980s,the two countries faced fairly similar conditions,at least on the macroeconomic level:both countries had sizable foreign debts, appreciating real exchange rates,large current account deficits,and weak-nesses in the banking sector.The two countries were also hit by similar external shocks.These shocks consisted of a jump in world interest rates, plummeting prices of their primary exports,and a cutoff of foreign lending. Some simple data provide a feel for the initial conditions:like many developing countries,Mexico and Chile took advantage of low world interest rates in the late1970s to build up large levels of foreign debt. Total external debt in Mexico in1982,which had grown by140%in U.S. dollars since1978,was53%of GDP.In Chile,total external debt had grown by134%in U.S.dollars since1978and was71%of GDP.The real exchange rate against the U.S.dollar?and the United States was by far both Mexico’s and Chile’s largest trading partner?had appreciated by 27%in Mexico between1978and1981and by26%in Chile.The current account deficit in Mexico in1981was5.8%of GDP,while in Chile it reached14.5%.By the end of1982,foreigners stopped financing new capital inflows,and the current account deficits disappeared.The banking sectors in Mexico and Chile were so vulnerable to the shocks that buffeted their economies that,in each case,the government found it necessary to take over private banks.In Mexico the government nationalized all of the banks,and in Chile the government took over distressed banks and

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nonbank financial institutions financieras that held more than55%of the assets in the financial sector.

The following data provide a feel for the magnitude of the shocks.Loans to Mexico and Chile were offered at a spread over the London Inter Bank ?.

Offer Rate LIBOR.Between1978and1981,in response to contrac-tionary U.S.monetary policy,the3-month U.S.dollar LIBOR jumped from8.8%to16.8%per year.In the early1980s,Mexico was heavily dependent on its exports of crude petroleum,which accounted for52%of total exports in1980.Chile was similarly heavily dependent on its exports of copper,which accounted for48%of its total exports in1980.Figure3 plots the prices of crude petroleum and copper relative to the U.S. Producer Price Index.The relative price of crude petroleum fell21%from 1980to1982,while that of copper fell39%.By the end of1982,following Mexico’s default,essentially no new private foreign loans were granted to Mexico or Chile until the end of the decade;although Mexico’s total external debt increased by25%in U.S.dollars between1981and1987and Chile’s increased by23%,almost all of the increases can be accounted for

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https://www.360docs.net/doc/fa14485641.html,modity prices deflated by U.S.PPI.

by loans from the International Monetary Fund and,in the case of Mexico, accumulation of unpaid interest.

3.DIFFERENT STORIES FOR DIFFERENT RECOVERIES Despite the similarities in their initial conditions,Mexico and Chile experienced very different recoveries from their crises.In this section,we consider four potential explanations for these different https://www.360docs.net/doc/fa14485641.html,-paring the case of Mexico with that of Chile allows us to rule out three of these explanations:although a story may have some merit when applied to one of the countries in isolation,we rule it out if it is incapable of explaining the differences between the experiences of the two countries.

Standard Monetarist Story

Crudely stated,the standard monetarist story is that,short of inducing hyperinflation,the more rapidly a country in a severe recession expands its money supply,the faster it recovers.We include this story,not because it has been proposed as a serious explanation of these episodes,but rather because it is probably the most common story for recovery from crisis. Even though we have oversimplified the story,the basic theme can be

?.

found in Friedman and Schwartz’s1963analysis of the Great Depression

MEXICO AND CHILE IN THE1980s173

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in the United States and is pervasive in the literature see,for example,?..

Lucas2001.

In Table I,we consider some simple statistics for1983?1987,the crucial period in which Chile began to recover while Mexico was still mired in crisis.We see that the annual growth rate of the money supply was substantially higher in Mexico than in Chile.This higher growth of money was associated with a faster growth of prices in Mexico than in Chile.It does not show up,however,in a faster growth of output for Mexico. Indeed,output per working-age person contracted in Mexico while it grew in Chile.Of course,even the most avid proponents of the monetarist story do not claim that monetary forces can account for a decade of growth. Nevertheless,it is interesting that these forces seem incapable of explain-ing even a single year or two of the path of output following the crisis. While the monetary story seems unable to account for the different paths of recovery,part of the downturn may well be associated with monetary factors.The jump in world interest rates that adversely affected Mexico and Chile was clearly associated with a monetary contraction in the United States.Moreover,in a failed effort to defend its nominal exchange rate,Chile contracted its money supply during the first three quarters of1982,and this policy may have deepened and prolonged its crisis.Of course,this argument begs the question of why Chile recovered so rapidly while Mexico,which had no contraction,did not.

Although we have treated the monetarist story in a superficial manner, at first blush it does not seem to be a promising route to follow.More generally,in most Latin American countries,high inflation is often associ-ated with large drops in output,not with substantial recoveries.It may be that this pattern for Latin America is quite different from the patterns in the United States and Europe,in which large drops in output are associ-ated with deflations,not inflations.If so,this is an area that warrants further study.

TABLE I

Annual Growth Rates of Output,Money,and

Prices,1983?1987

Mexico Chile

GDP per working-age person y2.20 3.27

?.

Money M166.4522.39

?.

Prices CPI83.2427.05

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Real Wages and Real Exchange Rate Depreciation Story

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In an influential article,Corbo and Fischer1994argue that one of the principal causes of Chile’s crisis in the early1980s was the government’s policy of fixing the nominal exchange rate for the4years before the crisis, while at the same time mandating that wages be adjusted at least one-for-one with past inflation.Given the high inflation the country had already experienced,these policies led to a continuation of past inflation,an appreciation of the real exchange rate,and a sharp increase in real wages. After the crisis,the government reversed its position.It undid its wage indexation policies and allowed the real exchange rate to depreciate. Figure4shows that real wages in manufacturing declined by15%in the2 years after1982.Furthermore,as shown in Fig.5,between1982and1987, Chile’s real exchange rate against the U.S.dollar depreciated by124%. This decline in wages,together with the depreciation of the real exchange

?.?rate,according to Corbo and Fischer1994,generated an export boom as .

shown in Fig.6that was the principal cause of Chile’s rapid recovery. The story of declining real wages and a depreciating real exchange rate generating an export boom that spurred the recovery sounds convincing for Chile.But can it explain the differences in the economic performances of Mexico and Chile?Probably not.The fall in real wages was substantially greater in Mexico than in Chile:in the2years following the crisis,real wages fell by almost30%,compared with15%in Chile.Furthermore,

FIG.4.Index of real wages in manufacturing.

MEXICO AND CHILE IN THE1980s175

FIG.5.Real exchange rate against the U.S.dollar.

FIG.6.International trade as a percentage of GDP.

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FIG.7.U.S.dollar exports deflated by U.S.PPI.

between1981and1987,the Mexican peso depreciated by95%against the U.S.dollar,compared with124%in Chile.As Fig.6shows,exports boomed in Mexico as well as in Chile as a percentage of GDP.

The data in Fig.6,which express exports as a percentage of GDP,can be misleading as indicators of the movements in the value of exports when there are substantial fluctuations in GDP and in the real exchange rate. Looking at the value of exports in U.S.dollars deflated by the U.S. Producer Price Index in Fig.7,we see that the value of Chile’s exports actually fell after1981while that of Mexico’s exports rose,falling below its 1981level only briefly in1986.Much of the movement in the dollar value of Mexico’s and Chile’s exports should come as no surprise,given the data on commodity prices in Fig.3.What is surprising is that,even though the price of copper recovered in the late1980s and early1990s and the price of crude petroleum did not,the dollar value of Mexico’s exports grew faster during this period than did Chile’s.By2000,Mexico was exporting 427%more than it had in1981,measured in terms of deflated U.S.dollars, while Chile was only exporting250%more.Moreover,returning to Fig.6, we see that,by2000,Mexico’s trade as a percentage of GDP exceeded Chile’s,even though Mexico’s economy was seven times larger.

If declining real wages and a depreciating real exchange rate generated an export boom in Chile,they had even more pronounced effects in

MEXICO AND CHILE IN THE1980s177

Mexico.5Yet,after1983,Chile’s economy recovered rapidly while Mexico’s stagnated.Consequently,we need to look elsewhere for an explanation of the differences in the recoveries.

Debt Overhang Story

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A hypothesis often associated with Sachs1989for Mexico’s slow recovery is the debt overhang story.The idea is that Mexico’s large external debt led to fears by potential new investors that most of the returns on any new investment would be used to pay down old loans. Potential new investors viewed the outstanding debt as leading to future ?.

implicit or explicit taxes on the returns to their new investments.Hence, these investors were discouraged from making new investments,and pri-vate incentives were distorted toward consuming rather than investing.The larger the outstanding debt,the higher the implicit tax on new investment, and the lower the actual investment.

To analyze this story,we plot the ratio of foreign debt to output in Mexico and Chile in Fig.8,and we plot the investment rate in these two countries in Fig.9.It is clear that both during and after the crisis,Mexico had an increasing ratio of debt to output and that,during the same period,

FIG.8.Total external debt as a percentage of GDP.

5This was especially true during and after the1994?1995crisis.

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FIG.9.Investment as a percentage of GDP.

Mexico’s investment?output ratio fell below its pre-crisis level.So,at least for Mexico,the pattern is not inconsistent with Sachs’s story.

Can Sachs’s story explain the difference between Mexico’s slow recovery and Chile’s fast recovery?As Fig.8makes clear,both during and after the crisis,Chile had a much higher debt?output ratio than Mexico.Further-more,in Fig.9,we see that Chile’s investment rate fell more abruptly than Mexico’s and only caught up and passed it in1989.Looking at macroeco-nomic aggregates like investment rates,we do not see how debt overhang can explain the different recoveries of Mexico and Chile.

Before leaving the debt overhang story,it is worth making two com-ments.First,it could be argued that Chile’s debts were somehow different from Mexico’s because a large portion had been privately contracted:in 1981only35.6%of Chile’s debt was public or publicly guaranteed,while 80.8%of Mexico’s was.Following the government bailout of Chile’s banking system,however,the portion of debt in Chile that was public or publicly guaranteed shot up,reaching86.3%in1987,compared with85.6% in Mexico.If the crucial factor in the debt overhang story is the level of public debt,Chile had more debt overhang during the crucial period when it was recovering and Mexico was not.Second,comparing Fig.8with Fig. 5,we see that most of the fluctuations of both counties’ratios of debt to output were due to depreciation of the domestic currency.This deprecia-tion increased the relative value of debt,which was mostly denominated in U.S.dollars.This suggests that Corbo and Fischer’s story for Chile’s

MEXICO AND CHILE IN THE1980s179 recovery,which says that depreciation is good because it drives up exports, conflicts with Sachs’s story for Mexico’s stagnation,which says that depre-ciation is bad because it drives up the relative value of foreign debt. Neither story is capable of explaining the differences between the eco-nomic performances of Mexico and Chile.

Structural Reforms Story

A promising explanation of the different recovery patterns is that in the 1970s Chile had undertaken structural reforms that set the stage for successful performance of the economy in the1980s.These reforms covered trade policy,fiscal policy,privatization,banking,and bankruptcy. In contrast,Mexico only undertook such reforms in the1980s or later. Could the different timing of the reforms have determined the different recovery patterns?Here we argue that neither trade policy reforms nor fiscal reforms can explain the differences.Privatization,banking,and bankruptcy reforms,however,may well be able to.

Consider first the differences in trade policy.By1979Chile had elimi-nated all quantitative restrictions on imports and imposed a uniform tariff of10%.The uniform tariff was increased to20%in1983and to35%in 1984and then was gradually lowered until it fell below its original level in ??..

1991see De la Cuadra and Hachette1991.In Mexico in1985,there was massive protection:in addition to tariffs,import licenses protected 100%of domestic production,and there were numerous other nontariff barriers and a system of dual exchange rates that gave preferred treatment to industries favored by the government.Starting in the mid-1980s,how-ever,Mexico embarked on a massive liberalization of trade policy that culminated in the implementation of the North American Free Trade

??..

Agreement in1994see,for example,Kehoe1995.Trade liberalization, like real exchange rate depreciation,generated exports in both Mexico and Chile,but it is hard to see how differences in the timing determined the different recoveries.As we have seen in Figs.6and7,trade grew more in Mexico during the crucial period of the late1980s and early1990s than it did in Chile,partly because Mexico was more closed than Chile to start with.

Consider next the differences in fiscal policy.In Chile,there was a major tax reform in1975,a major social security reform in1980,and another major tax reform in1984.In Mexico,there were major tax reforms in1980 and in1985.Corporate tax policy in Mexico was reformed in1987and 1989to lower distortions on investment.As Fig.10indicates,throughout much of the1980s Chile ran either a goverrunent surplus or a small deficit,while Mexico ran a deficit on the order of10%of GDP.Fiscal reforms undoubtedly played important roles in both Mexico and Chile in

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https://www.360docs.net/doc/fa14485641.html,ernment surplus as a percentage of GDP.

inducing higher rates of capital accumulation and work effort.In the next section,we use growth accounting and numerical experiments with a growth model to argue that these reforms had roughly similar impacts on the two economies?leaving the differences in their performances still unexplained.

?

Now consider differences in privatization.See,for example,Glade ?.?..

1996and Hachette and Luders1993.In Chile,by the end of the Allende administration in1973,a large fraction of the economy was under direct or indirect government control.From1974to1979,the Chilean government reprivatized much of the economy.In contrast,following the 1982crisis in Mexico,the government nationalized the banking system and,moreover,effectively appropriated the banks’holdings of private

?.

companies.Economists like Lustig1998estimate that,directly or indi-rectly,the government controlled60%to80%of GDP.In1984,Mexico began to reprivatize what it had nationalized,but only after1989was the reprivatization substantial.The nationalized banks were only privatized after1990.The different paces of privatization had effects both on the incentives to accumulate capital and on the efficiency with which that capital was allocated.

It is worth pointing out,however,that it is easy to exaggerate the importance of privatization in Chile relative to that in Mexico:although the number of state enterprises in Chile was reduced from596in1973to

MEXICO AND CHILE IN THE1980s181 48in1983,the portion of GDP generated by state enterprises only fell

from39%to24%.Chile’s national copper company,Corporacion Nacional ?.

del Cobre CODELCO,was still run by the government in2000,and its exports of copper accounted for13.8%of Chile’s exports.In contrast, crude petroleum exports in Mexico,which are controlled by the govern-

?.

ment’s Petroleos Mexicanos PEMEX,accounted for9.8%of Mexico’s exports in2000.Significantly,however,the government in Chile has allowed private competition in copper extraction,while the government in Mexico has not done so in petroleum extraction.

?

We now turn our attention to the banking sector.See,for example,

?.?..

′′

Barandiaran and Hernandez1999and Gruben and Welch1996.One way that differences in the workings of the banking systems manifested themselves was in the amount of private lending in the two economies.

?

Figure11graphs private credit which consists of all loans to the private

.

sector and to non-financial government enterprises as a percentage of output.Clearly,there was substantially more private lending taking place in Chile than in Mexico.In1973Chile had18national banks and one foreign bank.After a series of financial reforms that included deregula-tion,low reserve requirements,and opening to foreign competition,the number of financial institutions increased by1980to26national banks,19 foreign banks,and15financieras?the last are nonbank financial institu-tions that were subject to less stringent regulations than banks.The

FIG.11.Private credit as a percentage of GDP.

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explosion of financial institutions that were not highly regulated and that paid market-determined interest rates led to an explosion in private credit. In Mexico,in contrast,banks were few,highly regulated,and subject to very high reserve requirements.The government set very low deposit rates to give low-interest loans to preferred industries.Overall,the banking system in Mexico was used by the government as a way to channel funds to preferred borrowers at low interest rates.

These differences in banking systems led to huge differences in the allocation of credit in the two economies after the crisis.In Chile,credit allocation was determined mostly by the market;in Mexico it was deter-mined by the government.Although banks and financial institutions col-lapsed and were taken over by the government in both countries,the authorities reacted in very different ways when rescuing the financial sector and restoring credit flows.The Chilean authorities liquidated insol-vent banks and financieras,quickly reprivatized solvent banks that had been taken over because of liquidity problems,and set up a new regulatory scheme to avoid mismanagement.Banks were able to channel credit to firms at market rates?which were very high immediately following the

?. crisis.The banking reforms in Chile were costly:Sanhueza2001esti-mates that during1982?1986,the costs amounted to35%of1year’s GDP. In Mexico,in contrast,banks were nationalized and credit was allocated discretionarily at below-market rates.Figure11shows that credit to the private sector fell in Mexico after1982and continued to be very low for most of the decade.In fact,despite the massive bailout during the 1994?1995crisis,Mexico’s banking system still failed to provide credit to the private sector at levels comparable to those in Chile even in the late 1990s.In contrast,in Chile credit to the private sector expanded during 1982?1985and steadily declined as a fraction of GDP during the rest of the decade,mostly because of GDP growth.In retrospect,it appears that the immediate cost of the bank bailout paid for by Chile during the crisis was more than compensated for by later gains.

Finally,consider differences in the timing of the reform of bankruptcy procedures.In Chile,the1929bankruptcy law did not provide for an efficient and timely administration of bankruptcies because it relied on

?.

poorly paid public officials sindicos and highly bureaucratic procedures. Until the late1970s,bankruptcy proceedings languished for years in courts.Following an administrative reform of the bankruptcy management service in1978,the1982bankruptcy reform law clearly defined the rights of each creditor and replaced public sindicos with private sindicos.The law was passed at the onset of the crisis,and the government allowed firms to go bankrupt,avoiding the use of subsidies to keep them afloat,under the conviction that protection would unnecessarily lengthen the adjustment period.

MEXICO AND CHILE IN THE1980s183 It was this bankruptcy policy,in retrospect,that was crucial in making the initial phase of the crisis more severe in Chile than in Mexico.Figure 12shows that bankruptcies increased fivefold between1980and1982in Chile,but quickly returned to average levels.In contrast,Mexico had an obsolete and unwieldy bankruptcy law from1943in place until2000.The 2000bankruptcy law includes features similar to Chile’s1982law,particu-

?

larly the establishment of bankruptcy specialists especialistas de concursos .

mercantiles,who are intended to play much the same role as sindicos in Chile.Our interpretation is that Chile paid the short-term costs of letting many firms fail,and this led to a sharp,but short,fall in output followed by a strong recovery.Mexico,in contrast,attempted to muddle through the crisis.It had a less severe initial downturn but a much weaker recovery. Like privatization and the reforms in banking,the reform of bankruptcy procedures in Chile had effects both on the incentives to accumulate capital and on the efficiency with which that capital was allocated.We argue in all three of these cases that it was the effects on efficiency that were crucial for explaining the differences between Mexico and Chile after the crisis.Some support for that view is given by the data in Fig.9,which show that the investment rate in Mexico was not much below that in Chile. Our growth accounting analysis in the next section bolsters this view, namely that most of the differences in the paths of recovery stem from differences in productivity and not from differences in factor inputs. Hence,for these types of reforms to account for the different paths of

FIG.12.Business bankruptcies in Chile.

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recovery,they must have two features.First,they must show up primarily in productivity.Second,given the timings of reforms discussed above,they must have dynamic effects on productivity that show up gradually over time.

4.GROWTH ACCOUNTING AND THE GROWTH MODEL

To see whether the different timing of reforms can explain the different economic performances of Mexico and Chile,we use growth accounting to answer the questions:What portion of the different performances of Mexico and Chile can be accounted for by differences in inputs of factors like capital and labor?What portion can be accounted for by differences in the efficiency with which these factors were used?

Growth Accounting

In this paper,we employ the aggregate Cobb?Douglas production function

Y s A K?L1y?,1?.

t t t t

where Y is output,K is capital,L is labor,and A is total factor t t t t

?.

productivity TFP,

A s Y r K?L1y?.2?.

t t t t

To calculate A,given series for Y and L,we need to choose a value for t t t

?and to generate series for K.National income accounts indicate that

t

?

the share of labor compensation in GDP valued at factor prices GDP at

.

market prices minus indirect taxes in both Mexico and Chile is small relative to,say,that in the United States.In1980,for example,according

?.

to the United Nations1986,this share?which corresponds to1y?in our production function?was0.42in Mexico and0.53in Chile.We choose a higher value of the labor share for our growth accounting and

?.

numerical experiments,0.70,corresponding to?s0.30for two reasons, however.First,measured labor compensation in countries like Mexico and Chile fails to account for the income of most self-employed and family

?. workers,who make up a large fraction of the labor force.Gollin2001 shows that,for countries where there are sufficient data to adjust for this mismeasurement,the resulting labor shares tend to be close to the value in the United States,0.70.Second,a high capital share implies implausibly

?

high rates of return on capital in our numerical experiments.We provide alternative growth accounting and numerical experiments for a production function in which?s0.60in Appendix B;the qualitative nature of our

.

conclusions does not change.

MEXICO AND CHILE IN THE 1980s 185

To calculate a capital stock series,we cumulate investment,I ,using

t K s 1y ?K q I 3?.?.

t q 1t t for some chosen depreciation rate ?and an initial condition on capital.We use a depreciation rate ?s 0.05for both countries,and,for the initial condition on capital,we assume the capital ?output ratio grew from 1960to 1961by the same amount that it did over the period 1961?1970.As a check,we note that with these choices the share of capital consumption in GDP,which in the model is measured by ?K r Y ,is equal to the number t t ?.reported by the United Nations 1986for Mexico in 1980.To reproduce the corresponding number for Chile in 1980,we would need a higher depreciation rate,?s 0.08.We choose to use ?s 0.05for two reasons.First,we want to use the same production technology in our growth accounting and numerical experiments for Chile as for Mexico.Second,a higher value of ?for Chile yields implausibly low values of the capital ??output ratio there.We provide alternative growth accounting and numer-ical experiments for a production technology in which ?s 0.08in .Appendix B;the qualitative nature of our conclusions does not change.Given our choice of ?and generated series for K ,we can calculate t TFP series.Figure 13plots the series for Mexico and Chile detrended by

1.4%per year.We detrend at this rate because in a balanced growth path,where output and capital per worker grow by 2%per year,TFP would have to grow by 1.4%per year,1.021y 0.3s 1.0140.What is striking about Fig.13is how closely the TFP data match those for GDP per working-age

FIG.13.Total factor productivity detrended by 1.4%per year.

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