Person:
De la Torre, Augusto

Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean Region, The World Bank

Fields of Specialization

Macroeconomics, Financial development

External Links

SSRN

Departments

Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean Region, The World Bank

Last updated January 31, 2023

Biography

Augusto de la Torre, a national of Ecuador, is the Chief Economist for Latin American and the Caribbean. Since joining the World Bank in 1997, he has held the positions of Senior Advisor in the Financial Systems Department and Senior Financial Sector Advisor, both in the Latin America and the Caribbean region. From 1993 to 1997, Mr. de la Torre was the head of the Central Bank of Ecuador, and in November 1996 was chosen by Euromoney Magazine as the year’s "Best Latin Central Banker." From 1986 to 1992 he worked at the International Monetary Fund, where, among other positions, he was the IMF’s Resident Representative in Venezuela (1991-1992). Mr. de la Torre has published extensively on a broad range of macroeconomic and financial development topics. He is a member of the Carnegie Network of Economic Reformers. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Economics at the University of Notre Dame and holds a Bachelors degree in Philosophy from the Catholic University of Ecuador.

Full item page

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 50

Capital Market Development : Whither Latin America?

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-03) de la Torre, Augusto ; Gozzi, Juan Carlos ; Schmukler, Sergio L.

Over the past decades, many countries have implemented significant reforms to foster capital market development. Latin American countries were at the forefront of this process. The authors analyze where Latin American capital markets stand after these reforms. They find that despite the intense reform effort, capital markets in Latin America remain underdeveloped relative to markets in other regions. Furthermore, stock markets are below what can be expected, given Latin America's economic and institutional fundamentals. The authors discuss alternative ways of interpreting this evidence. They argue that it is difficult to pinpoint which policies Latin American countries should pursue to overcome their poor capital market development. Moreover, they argue that expectations about the outcome of the reform process may need to be revisited to take into account intrinsic characteristics of emerging economies. The latter may limit the scope for developing deep domestic capital markets in a context of international financial integration.
Stock Market Development under Globalization : Whither the Gains from Reforms?

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-04) de la Torre, Augusto ; Gozzi, Juan Carlos ; Schmukler, Sergio L.

Over the past decades, many countries have implemented significant reforms to foster domestic capital market development. These reforms included stock market liberalization, privatization programs, and the establishment of regulatory and supervisory frameworks. Despite the intense reform efforts, the performance of capital markets in several countries has been disappointing. To study whether reforms have had the intended effects on capital markets, the authors analyze the impact of six capital market reforms on domestic stock market development and internationalization using event studies. They find that reforms tend to be followed by significant increases in domestic market capitalization, trading, and capital raising. Reforms are also followed by an increase in the share of activity in international equity markets, with potential negative spillover effects on domestic markets.
Innovative Experiences in Access to Finance : Market Friendly Roles for the Visible Hand?

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-08) de la Torre, Augusto ; Gozzi, Juan Carlos ; Schmukler, Sergio L.

Interest in access to finance has increased significantly in recent years, as growing evidence suggests that lack of access to credit prevents lower-income households and small firms from financing high return investment projects, having an adverse effect on growth and poverty alleviation. This study describes some recent innovative experiences to broaden access to credit. These experiences are consistent with an emerging new view that recognizes a limited role for the public sector in financial markets, but contends that there might be room for well-designed, restricted interventions in collaboration with the private sector to foster financial development and broaden access. The authors illustrate this view with several recent experiences in Latin America and then discuss some open policy questions about the role of the public and private sectors in driving these financial innovations.
Bank Involvement with SMEs : Beyond Relationship Lending

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-06) de la Torre, Augusto ; Martínez Pería, María Soledad ; Schmukler, Sergio L.

The "conventional wisdom" in academic and policy circles argues that, while large and foreign banks are generally not interested in serving SMEs, small and niche banks have an advantage in doing so because they can overcome SME opaqueness through relationship lending. This paper shows that there is a gap between this view and what banks actually do. Banks perceive SMEs as a core and strategic business and seem well positioned to expand their links with SMEs. The recent intensification of bank involvement with SMEs in various emerging markets documented in this paper is neither led by small or niche banks nor highly dependent on relationship lending. Rather, all types of banks are catering to SMEs and larger, multiple-service banks have in fact a comparative advantage in offering a wide range of products and services on a large scale, through the use of new technologies, business models, and risk management systems.
Coping with Risk through Mismatches : Domestic and International Financial Contracts for Emerging Economies

(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2004-02) de la Torre, Augusto ; Schmukler, Sergio L.

The authors argue that short termism, dollarization, and the use of foreign jurisdictions are endogenous ways of coping with systemic risks prevalent in emerging markets. They represent a symptom at least as much as a problem. These coping mechanisms are jointly determined and the choice of one of them involves risk tradeoffs. Various conclusions can be derived from the analysis. First, because of the dominance of dollar contracts over short-duration contracts, dedollarization might be much more difficult to achieve than often believed. Second, one-dimensional policies aimed at reducing currency and duration mismatches might just displace risk and not diminish it. Third, as systemic risks rise, the market equilibrium settles in favor of investor protection against price risk (through dollar and short-duration contracts) at the expense of exposure to credit risk. Finally, the option value to litigate in the event of default might explain this equilibrium outcome.
Toward a Conceptual Framework for the Knowledge Bank

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-09) Chioda, Laura ; de la Torre, Augusto ; Maloney, William F.

This paper proposes some basic elements of a conceptual framework to help organize the thinking about policies that can strengthen the knowledge mission of the World Bank. It first argues that the Bank occupies a unique and prominent subset of the social and economic development "knowledge space" that ranges from abstract basic research to codified knowledge solutions. The fact that this niche centrally includes the provision of public good-intensive knowledge weakens organizational analogies between the Bank and private consulting firms. The range of products coupled with an increasing emphasis on just-in-time advisory services dictate the need for not more generalists, but rather an increased range and depth of very specific and high quality human capital. However, this increased specialization in turn creates the need for "hinge" actors who can communicate and operate well across different knowledge communities -- academics, policy makers, practitioners, etc. The necessary changes in human resource and incentive policies, in particular the critical development of better means of ensuring the quality of knowledge production, are an essential complement to any organizational restructuring.
The Foundations of Macroprudential Regulation : A Conceptual Roadmap

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-08) de la Torre, Augusto ; Ize, Alain

This paper examines the conceptual foundations of macroprudential policy by reviewing the literature on financial frictions from a policy perspective that systematically links state interventions to market failures. The method consists in gradually incorporating into the Arrow-Debreu world a variety of frictions and sources of aggregate volatility and combining them along three basic dimensions: purely idiosyncratic vs. aggregate volatility, full vs. bounded rationality, and internalized vs. uninternalized externalities. The analysis thereby obtains eight "domains," four of which include aggregate volatility, hence call for macroprudential policy variants grounded on largely orthogonal rationales. Two of them emerge even assuming that externalities are internalized: one aims at offsetting the public moral hazard implications of (efficient but time inconsistent) post-crisis policy interventions, the other at maintaining principal-agent incentives continuously aligned along the cycle. Allowing for uninternalized externalities justifies two additional types of macroprudential policy, one aimed at aligning private and social interests, the other at tempering mood swings. Choosing a proper regulatory path is complicated by the fact that the relevance of frictions is likely to be state-dependent and that different frictions motivate different (and often conflicting) policies.
Latin America’s Deceleration and the Exchange Rate Buffer : LAC Semiannual Report, October 2013

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013-10-09) de la Torre, Augusto ; Levy Yeyati, Eduardo ; Pienknagura, Samuel

This semiannual report examines the short and medium-term challenges for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) as the external factors that were instrumental in the region’s recent performance recede. In particular, we address the role of the exchange rate as a counter-cyclical policy tool to buffer adverse external shocks. As is customary in this series, Chapter 1 starts by providing an overview of the global economy and its implications for the short and medium-term prospects of the LAC region. It also examines the vulnerabilities of the region as tailwinds recede. Chapter 2 describes the new role of the exchange rate as a shock absorber in LAC amid the important transformations observed in the region in the past decade on the macro-financial front. Finally, Chapter 3 gives a detailed look at exchange rate-smoothing policy interventions.
Coping with Risk through Mismatches : Domestic and International Financial Contracts for Emerging Economies

(Wiley, 2005-01-12) de la Torre, Augusto ; Schmukler, Sergio L.

We analyse how short termism, dollarization and foreign jurisdictions are ways of coping with systemic risks prevalent in emerging economies. These are symptoms at least as much as problems. We conclude first that under high systemic risks, the market equilibrium settles in favour of investor protection against price risk (through short-duration peso and dollar contracts) instead of protection against default risk. Second, the option value to litigate in the event of default, which is higher in dollar and foreign-jurisdiction contracts, may explain this equilibrium outcome and, more generally, the ‘original sin’. Third, dollar contracts trump short-duration peso contracts as a risk-coping device; they are a better hedge against inflation volatility and are superior at mitigating the risk of loss given default. Fourth, according to a conservation principle, the mitigation of risk via the use of a coping mechanism allows additional risk taking in other forms, leaving total risk unchanged.
The Conceptual Foundations of Macroprudential Policy : A Roadmap

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-08) de la Torre, Augusto ; Ize, Alain

This paper explores post-Lehman macroprudential regulation by interacting two types of market failures (principal-agent and collective action) with two cognition modes (unconstrained and constrained) in the context of aggregate risk. Four paradigms with orthogonal policy justifications are identified. In the first time consistency paradigm, regulation offsets the moral hazard implications of efficient but time inconsistent post-crisis bailouts. In the second dynamic alignment paradigm, it protects unsophisticated market participants by maintaining principal-agent incentives continuously aligned in the face of aggregate shocks. In the third collective action paradigm, regulation arises in response to the socially inefficient yet rational financial instability resulting from uninternalized externalities. The fourth collective cognition paradigm is grounded on the need to temper the mood swings that arise from bounded rationality or severe cognitive frictions in a rapidly changing, complex and uncertain world. These four rationales give rise to important tensions and trade-offs in the design of macroprudential policy.