Papers presented by Gustavo Del Angel since 2019

2022 Mexico City

"Private and state-owned banks in times of high instability. Mexico 1970-1988"

Abstract:

What are the effects of banks’ expropriationby the government in an environment of high macroeconomic instability? In 1982, in the beginning of the Latin American debt crisis, the Mexican government expropriated the banking industry. This was an inflexion point in the financial system of that country. At the time of the expropriation, global crisis, financial repression and macroeconomic instability created adverse conditionsfor the financial system. This scenario provides a natural experiment to analyze how coping with a crisis might change from a situation in whichbanks were privately-owned to one in which they were State-owned institutions. But in such context, strategies to cope with an environment of risk and instability differ among banks and they -individually-exhibitdifferent performance. Our goal is to explain how those strategies changed after banks became state-owned organizations and explain whether legacies in individual banks influenced their strategies and performance after they were expropriated, or not.We advance two preliminary hypotheses. First, as it should be expected, strategies of banks to cope with risk and instability change from private to state-owned,since they respond to their shareholders’interest. Moreover, asstate-owned firms, the banking systemenjoyed better coordination and joint capacity to solve problems emerging from the macro crisis. Second, legacies in the internal organization of banks made a difference in their performance after the expropriation and its aftermath.

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2022 Mexico City

"Government Financial Archives in Mexico: its relevance for global history"

Abstract:

This presentation discussess the government financial archives in Mexico, in particular, the historical archive of the central bank and the collections at the Ministry of Finance.

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2020 Charlotte, North Carolina

"The Trap and the Temptation: Government Financing to Mexican Mining"

Abstract:

This paper studies the provision of finance to the Mexican mining industry by the government during the period 1940-1990. It aims to answer the questions of what explains an increasing participation of the state in an industry and why that participation might persist over time. It argues that the government had both, development and political goals, and mining was an activity prone to receive government financing. When lending or funding equity to mining firms, the State absorbed the sunk costs and risks of this activity. In bad times for mining, due to the characteristics of mining, the State maintained its support and sometimes became an owner to rescue troubled firms. In thriving times, the State had the temptation to finance more firms and/or increase its ownership. As a result, the Mexican government ended up with a large complex of state owned mining enterprises. A divestiture process followed in the eighties.

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