Person: Samano, Agustin
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Samano Penaloza, Agustin
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Last updated:December 8, 2025
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Agustin Samano is a research economist in the Macroeconomics and Growth team of the World Bank’s Development Research Group. His research focuses on international macroeconomics and international finance, with a special emphasis on monetary-fiscal issues in emerging market economies. He is currently based at the World Bank's East Asia & Pacific Chief Economist Research Center in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Minnesota in 2021.
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Publication Expansionary Fiscal Consolidation Under Sovereign Risk(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-27) Esquivel, Carlos; Samano, AgustinThis paper develops a sovereign default model with capital accumulation, long-term debt, and fiscal rules with two distortions: debt dilution and private underinvestment. Fiscal rules generate a long-run economic expansion because they mitigate default risk caused by dilution, which increases capital accumulation. In the short run, however, the economy goes through a costly transition where consumption and investment drop to finance debt reduction. These dynamic trade-offs are quantified, and the welfare gains of fiscal rules are computed using a calibration for Argentina. A debt limit of 44 percent of gross domestic product attains the maximal welfare gain of 0.5 percent. Implementation of the debt limit generates short-lived drops in consumption and investment of 5 and 7 percent, respectively, and a long-run gross domestic product expansion of 1.4 percent. The paper relaxes the assumption of commitment to the rule and discusses how the threat of exclusion from implementing future rules provides enough incentives to avoid deviations. Welfare gains more than double in this case.Publication The Sovereign Spread Compressing Effect of Fiscal Rules during Global Crises(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-28) Islamaj, Ergys; Samano Penaloza, Agustin; Sommers, ScottDo fiscal rules help suppress sovereign spreads during periods of global financial stress Yes! This paper examines whether fiscal rules contribute to mitigating sovereign spreads in emerging markets and developing economies during periods of heightened financial and economic volatility worldwide. It finds that the presence of fiscal rules is statistically significantly associated with lower sovereign spreads during the COVID-19 crisis — about 350 basis points lower on average. Interestingly, this correlation persists even when nations deviate from these rules, indicating an expectation of post-crisis compliance. The study shows that deviations from fiscal rules are typically short-lived, with fiscal balance rules reinstated within 3.5 years. Robustness checks, including controls for institutional quality, fiscal rule strength, and global and regional factors confirm these results. Overall, the findings suggest that fiscal rules can help emerging markets and developing economies signal fiscal responsibility during episodes of global financial stress, reducing borrowing costs relative to countries without fiscal rules.Publication Drivers of Public Debt in East Asia and Pacific Economies(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-12-16) Islamaj, Ergys; Samano, AgustinPublic debt in developing East Asia and Pacific (EAP) economies has increased markedly since the recession in 2020 induced by COVID-19 pandemic. This brief uses standard debt dynamic accounting decomposition to quantify the main drivers of debt accumulation in developing EAP countries since 2000. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, larger primary deficits have been the main drivers of the increase in the ratio of public debt to GDP in most developing EAP economies. While strong GDP growth and, to a certain extent, inflation have helped deflate public-debt-to-GDP ratios during the past two decades, they have, on average, been more muted since the COVID-19 shock.Publication International Reserves and Central Bank Independence(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11) Samano, AgustinThis paper proposes a novel theory of reserve accumulation that emphasizes the role of an independent central bank. Motivated by a positive correlation between reserve accumulation and central bank independence in Latin America, the paper develops a quantitative sovereign default model with an independent central bank that can accumulate a risk-free foreign asset. The findings show that if the central bank is more patient than the government and as patient as households are, in equilibrium, the government issues more debt than what is socially optimal, and the central bank accumulates reserves to undo government over-borrowing. A key insight is that the government can issue more debt for any level of reserves but chooses not to because doing so would increase sovereign spreads, making it more costly to borrow. Quantitatively, the analysis finds that the central bank independence channel accounts for 75 percent of the average reserve levels observed in Mexico from 1994 to 2017. Finally, the paper shows that accumulating reserves improves social welfare. Welfare gains come from reducing the costs of front-loading public spending.