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Essay on Mexican Economic Crisis

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After nearly a decade of stagnant economic activity and high inflation in Mexico, the Mexican government liberalized the trade sector in 1985, adopted an economic stabilization plan at the end of 1987, and gradually introduced market-oriented institutions. Those reforms led to the resumption of economic growth, which averaged 3.1 percent per year between 1989 and 1994. In 1993 inflation was brought down to single-digit levels for the first time in more than two decades. As its economic reforms advanced, Mexico began to attract more foreign investment, a development helped by the absence of major restrictions on capital inflows, especially in the context of low U.S. interest rates. Indeed, large capital inflows began in 1990, when a …show more content…

The financial sector was liberalized: lending and borrowing rates were freed, the forced channeling of credit was abolished, and bank reserve requirements were eliminated.
2. Banks were hastily privatized, in some instances with no due respect to ``fit and proper'' criteria, either in the selection of new shareholders or top officers (see Honohan 1997: 13, and Ort z 1997). It must be noted, however, that on average the banks remained in government hands for half of the expansionary period.
3. Several banks were purchased without their owners proceeding to their proper capitalization. Shareholders often leveraged their stock acquisitions, sometimes with loans provided by the very banks bought out or from other reciprocally collaborating institutions.
4. The expropriation of the commercial banks in 1982 contributed to their loss of a substantial amount of human capital during the years in which they were under the government. With these officials institutional memory migrated as well.
5. Moral hazard was increased by the unlimited backing of bank liabilities.
6. There were no capitalization rules based on market risk. This encouraged asset-liability mismatches that in turn led to a highly liquid liability structure.

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