External Shocks and Financial Collapse: Foreign-Loan Guarantees and Intertemporal Substitution of Investment in Texas and Chile
分析政府外贷担保如何导致投资在担保终止前集中，延迟清算破产机构，加剧金融崩溃，并以智利和德克萨斯案例说明。
In the decade of the 1980's the banking systems of a number of economies-including those of Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Malaysia, Norway, Texas, and Venezuela-collapsed in the face of external shocks. However, the collapses did not occur immediately following the external shocks. In general, macroeconomic stabilization efforts were followed by investment booms before the collapses (Brock, 1992). The investment booms were made possible by government guarantees on foreign loans extended to the economies. Government foreign-loan guarantees potentially are useful instruments for the fiscal management of financial losses suffered by banks and firms. If financial claims against domestic assets increase in riskiness as a result of an external shock, a problem of underinvestment in an economy may occur. Foreigners who might otherwise lend to the economy will not do so if their financial claims are placed in the same risk category as other existing claims.' Foreign loan guarantees permit the financing of new projects while failed banks and firms are being recapitalized or liquidated. Although foreign-loan guarantees in the aftermath of an external shock encourage foreigners to lend to financially distressed banks and firms, this paper will explore the possibility that these loan guarantees may also distort an economy's macroeconomic adjustment by permitting a postponement of the liquidation process. For example, the failure to close banks quickly has been singled out by Sergio De la Cuadra and Salvador Valdes (1992) as the dominant macroeconomic problem distorting the adjustment of the Chilean economy in 1981 and 1982. Paul Horvitz (1992) has also emphasized political unwillingness to shut down insolvent savings and loans as a major element in the magnificantion of the costs of the financial collapse in Texas. This paper first develops an analytical model in which a government's delay in the payment of loan guarantees produces an intertemporal shifting of investment expenditure into the period preceding the termination of the guarantees. The paper then examines case studies of Chile (1981-1985) and Texas (1984-1988) to illustrate the macroeconomic consequences of delays in the closure of insolvent financial institutions.