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Western Hemisphere > Argentina

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Cover The IMF’s Exceptional Access Policy
The IMF’s Exceptional Access Policy
Evaluation Report Dec 2024
Vivek B Arora
,
Miguel de Las Casas
,
Yasemin Bal Gündüz
,
Jérémie Cohen-Setton
,
Kelsie J Gentle
,
Jiakun Li
,
Carmen Rollins
, and
Sandra Saveikyte

Abstract

The evaluation assesses the EAP’s rationale, evolution, and implementation during the period since its adoption in 2002. It assesses whether the EAP has fulfilled the objectives that guided its creation, namely, shaping members’ and market expectations, providing clearer benchmarks for Board decisions on program design and exceptional access, safeguarding the Fund’s resources, and helping to ensure uniformity of treatment of members. The evaluation draws on background papers comprising both thematic and country studies that draw on experience with the 38 exceptional access programs completed through mid-2023. The thematic papers analyze the rationale and evolution of the EAP as well as the three building blocks of the policy: the exceptional access criteria, enhanced Board decision-making procedures, and ex post evaluations. The country papers comprise both cross-country studies and country-specific studies of the completed programs with Argentina (2018), Ecuador (2020), and Egypt (2020).

Keywords:
Exceptional access; IMF lending; safeguarding Fund resources; program design; uniformity of treatment; risk management; program success; EA program; surcharge rate; ToC of an Na arrangement; detailed Theory of Change; Debt sustainability; Reputational risk; Balance of payments need; Capital account crisis; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Predicting IMF-Supported Programs: A Machine Learning Approach
Tsendsuren Batsuuri
,
Shan He
,
Ruofei Hu
,
Jonathan Leslie
, and
Flora Lutz
This study applies state-of-the-art machine learning (ML) techniques to forecast IMF-supported programs, analyzes the ML prediction results relative to traditional econometric approaches, explores non-linear relationships among predictors indicative of IMF-supported programs, and evaluates model robustness with regard to different feature sets and time periods. ML models consistently outperform traditional methods in out-of-sample prediction of new IMF-supported arrangements with key predictors that align well with the literature and show consensus across different algorithms. The analysis underscores the importance of incorporating a variety of external, fiscal, real, and financial features as well as institutional factors like membership in regional financing arrangements. The findings also highlight the varying influence of data processing choices such as feature selection, sampling techniques, and missing data imputation on the performance of different ML models and therefore indicate the usefulness of a flexible, algorithm-tailored approach. Additionally, the results reveal that models that are most effective in near and medium-term predictions may tend to underperform over the long term, thus illustrating the need for regular updates or more stable – albeit potentially near-term suboptimal – models when frequent updates are impractical.
Keywords:
Early warning systems; IMF Lending; Machine Learning; IMF arrangement; ML model; machine learning approach; state-of-the-art machine learning; machine learning model; Emergency assistance; Data processing; Global financial crisis of 2008-2009; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Debt Surges—Drivers, Consequences, and Policy Implications
Florian Schuster
,
Marwa Alnasaa
,
Lahcen Bounader
,
Il Jung
,
Jeta Menkulasi
, and
Joana da Mota
Many countries find themselves with elevated debt levels, increased debt vulnerabilities, and tight financing conditions, while also facing increased spending needs for development and transition to a greener economy. This paper aims to place the current debt landscape in a historical context and investigate the drivers of debt surges, to what degree they result in a crisis as well as examine post-surge debt trajectories and under what conditions debt follows a non-declining path. We find that fiscal policy and stock-flow adjustments play important roles in debt dynamics with the valuation effects arising from currency depreciation explaining more than half of stock flow adjustments in LICs. Debt surges are estimated to result in a financial crisis with a probability of 11–20 percent and spending-driven fiscal expansions during debt surges tend to result in a high probability of non-declining debt path.
Keywords:
Public debt; debt surges; financial crisis; stock-flow adjustment; exchange rate depreciation; fiscal expansion; debt surge; surge episode; surge attribute; post debt path; surge debt trajectory; Contingent liabilities; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Financial Stress and Economic Activity: Evidence from a New Worldwide Index
Hites Ahir
,
Mr. Giovanni Dell'Ariccia
,
Davide Furceri
,
Mr. Chris Papageorgiou
, and
Hanbo Qi
This paper uses text analysis to construct a continuous financial stress index (FSI) for 110 countries over each quarter during the period 1967-2018. It relies on a computer algorithm along with human expert oversight and is thus easy to update. The new indicator has a larger country and time coverage and higher frequency than similar measures focusing on advanced economies. And it complements existing binary chronologies in that it can assess the severity of financial crises. We use the indicator to assess the impact of financial stress on the economy using both country- and firm-level data. Our main findings are fivefold: i) consistent with existing literature, we show an economically significant and persistent relationship between financial stress and output; ii) the effect is larger in emerging markets and developing economies and (iii) for higher levels of financial stress; iv) we deal with simultaneous causality by constructing a novel instrument—financial stress originating from other countries—using information from the text analysis, and show that, while there is clear evidence that financial stress harms economic activities, OLS estimates tend to overestimate the magnitude of this effect; (iv) we confirm the presence of an exogenous effect of financial stress through a difference-in-differences exercise and show that effects are larger for firms that are more financially constrained and less profitable.
Keywords:
Financial stress; text analysis; country reports; continuous indicator; country and firm economic activity.; firm economic activity; effect of FSI; financial crises episode; Financial soundness indicators; Banking crises; Reserve requirements; Global financial crisis of 2008-2009; Global
Cover Policy Papers
Staff Guidance Note on Information Sharing in The Context of Sovereign Debt Restructurings
International Monetary Fund. Legal Dept.
and
International Monetary Fund. Strategy, Policy, & Review Department
The guidance note sets out principles governing information sharing in the context of sovereign debt restructurings. It restates the existing Fund governance and policy guidelines for information sharing to help inform and harmonize practices across Fund country teams. In addition to outlining guiding principles applicable to information sharing, it provides guidance on what level of information can be shared during each stage of the restructuring and program design process and in the surveillance context
Keywords:
confidentiality; debt relief; debt sustainability analysis; executive board documents; external debt; fund policies; policy framework papers; political economy; publications; public debt; transparency; draft debt sustainability analysis; transparency policy; Fund staff; Fund arrangement; draft DSA document; restructuring process; Fund-supported program; analysis act; Debt sustainability; Debt restructuring; Sovereign debt restructuring
Cover IMF Working Papers
Understanding and Predicting Systemic Corporate Distress: A Machine-Learning Approach
Ms. Burcu Hacibedel
and
Ritong Qu
In this paper, we study systemic non-financial corporate sector distress using firm-level probabilities of default (PD), covering 55 economies, and spanning the last three decades. Systemic corporate distress is identified by elevated PDs across a large portion of the firms in an economy. A machine-learning based early warning system is constructed to predict the onset of distress in one year’s time. Our results show that credit expansion, monetary policy tightening, overvalued stock prices, and debt-linked balance-sheet weaknesses predict corporate distress. We also find that systemic corporate distress events are associated with contractions in GDP and credit growth in advanced and emerging markets at different degrees and milder than financial crises.
Keywords:
Nonfinancial sector; Probability of default; Early warning systems; Macroprudential policy; balance-sheet weakness; appendix B constructing predictor; distress events; appendix C machine learning model; PD indices; Corporate sector; Banking crises; Credit; Financial statements; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Sovereign Debt
Mr. Leonardo Martinez
,
Mr. Francisco Roch
,
Francisco Roldán
, and
Mr. Jeromin Zettelmeyer
This paper surveys the literature on sovereign debt from the perspective of understanding how sovereign debt differs from privately issue debt, and why sovereign debt is deemed safe in some countries but risky in others. The answers relate to the unique power of the sovereign. One the one hand, a sovereign has the power to tax, making debt relatively safe; on the other, it also has control over its territory and most of its assets, making debt enforcement difficult. The paper discusses debt contracts and the sovereign debt market, sovereign debt restructurings, and the empirical and theoretical literatures on the costs and causes of defaults. It describes the adverse impact of sovereign default risk on the issuing countries and what explains this impact. The survey concludes with a discussion of policy options to reduce sovereign risk, including fiscal frameworks that act as commitment devices, state-contingent debt, and independent and credible monetary policy.
Keywords:
Sovereign Debt; Safe Debt; Debt Default; Debt Restructuring; Costs of Sovereign Default; Political Defaults; Fiscal Frameworks; State Contingent Debt; Original Sin; debt contract; short-term debt; market value; sovereign default; capital market exclusion; default decision; default event; payment terms; liquid asset; Securities markets; Fiscal rules; Global
Cover Policy Papers
Reviews of the Fund's Sovereign ARREARS Policies and Perimeter
International Monetary Fund. Legal Dept.
,
International Monetary Fund. Monetary and Capital Markets Department
, and
International Monetary Fund. Strategy, Policy, & Review Department
This paper undertakes a comprehensive review of the Fund’s sovereign arrears policies. Staff assesses that the Fund’s Lending into Arrears to Private Creditors (LIA) policy (established in 1989 and last reviewed in 2002) remains broadly appropriate, while recommending some improvements given the experience gained over the last 20 years. Staff also sees merit in codifying the existing practice guiding the Fund in preemptive debt restructurings into a Fund policy, together with an amendment focusing on debt transparency. Given limited experience with the application of the LIOA policy (established in 2015), staff does not propose any amendments but only one restatement confirming current practice. Given recent developments in the international creditor community, staff proposes refining the Fund’s arrears policies with respect to multilateral creditors. Finally, recent developments raise questions about the perimeter between official bilateral and private claims, with significant implications for the Fund’s arrears policies.
Keywords:
executive board understanding; draft executive board understanding; SPR coordinator; fund policy; executive board consideration; Arrears; Debt restructuring; Debt sustainability; Multilateral development institutions; Bonds; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
The Premia on State-Contingent Sovereign Debt Instruments
Ms. Deniz O Igan
,
Mr. Taehoon Kim
, and
Antoine Levy
State-contingent debt instruments such as GDP-linked warrants have garnered attention as a potential tool to help debt-stressed economies smooth repayments over business cycles, yet very few studies of the empirical properties of these instruments exist. This paper develops a general f ramework to estimate the time-varying risk premium of a state-contingent sovereign debt instrument. Our estimation framework applied to GDP-linked warrants issued by Argentina, Greece, and Ukraine reveals three stylized facts: (i) the risk premium in state-contingent instruments is high and persistent; (ii) the risk premium exhibits a pro-cyclical pattern; and (iii) the liquidity premium is higher and more volatile than that for plain-vanilla government bonds issued by the same sovereign. We then present a model in which investors fear ambiguity and that can account for the cyclical properties of the risk premium.
Keywords:
State-contingent debt instruments; GDP-linked warrants; Risk premia; Procyclicality; liquidity premium; GDP-linked warrant; estimation framework; SCDI premium; Sovereign bonds; Securities; Bonds; Liquidity; Debt restructuring; Global
Cover Policy Papers
Issues in Restructuring of Sovereign Domestic Debt
International Monetary Fund
As emerging and developing economies accumulate more domestic sovereign debt, it is likely to play a larger role in the resolution of future sovereign debt crises. This paper analyzes when and how to restructure sovereign domestic debt in unsustainable debt cases while minimizing economic and financial disruptions. Key to determining whether or not domestic debt should be part of a sovereign restructuring is weighing the benefits of the lower debt burden against the fiscal and broader economic costs of achieving that debt relief. The fiscal costs may have to be incurred in the context of restructuring because of the need to maintain financial stability, to ensure the functioning of the central bank, or to replenish pension savings. A sovereign domestic debt restructuring should be designed to anticipate, minimize, and manage its impact on the domestic economy and financial system. Casting the net wide across claims can help boost participation in the restructuring by lowering the relief sought from each creditor group. A strategy that engages creditors constructively, and as transparently as possible, that relies on market-based incentives, and that presents the exchange as part of a consistent macroeconomic plan typically works best.
Keywords:
domestic debt; sovereign debt restructuring; sovereign default; emerging market economies; developing economies; debt reduction strategy; Restructuring event; transparency policy; reduction episode; restructuring events; debt exchange; Debt restructuring; Domestic debt; Sovereign debt restructuring; Global