Person:
Sanchez, Susana M.
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Growth determinants,
Poverty,
Financial markets,
Labor markets,
Small and medium enterprise development
Degrees
ORCID
Departments
Macroeconomics, Trade, and Investment Global Practice
Africa
Africa
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Susana Sanchez is the senior country economist for The Gambia in the Macroeconomics, Trade, and Investment Global Practice of the World Bank. She is currently based in Washington, DC. She has conducted research on growth determinants, financial markets and poverty, labor markets, and small and medium enterprise development, and has also led technical and advisory work on access to finance issues in Mexico, Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, Turkey, and Romania.
Publication Search Results
1 - 6 of 6
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Publication
Financial Markets, Credit Constraints, and Investment in Rural Romania
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2001-04)The report assesses the performance of financial markets in rural areas of Romania, based on three - rural household, rural enterprise, and financial intermediary - surveys, carried out in 1998, and other official data covering 1997. The study finds that rural financial markets perform rather poorly in three key dimensions: the degree of access to financial services by rural economic agents (enterprises and households) is very limited; this limited access hinders the ability of these agents to take advantage of the investment opportunities available in rural areas; and, these markets failed to allocate flows of credit to those agents with the most profitable investment opportunities. This poor performance is caused by an unfortunate combination of short term circumstances, structural factors, and government policies, and interventions. In particular, the degree of access to credit services by rural agents is very low, because several factors have combined, to weaken both the supply of, and demand for rural credit. The report suggests a detailed government strategy to correct the observed shortcomings of rural financial markets, and identifies new challenges likely to appear. Moreover, the Government could assist in increasing the availability of credit, by improving policies in financial markets, legal and regulatory framework, and, the ability of the financial sector to provide retail financial services. -
Publication
Bank Lending to Small Businesses in Latin America : Does Bank Origin Matter?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2002-01)In recent years foreign bank participation has increased tremendously in Latin America. Some observers argue that foreign bank entry will benefit Latin American banking systems by reducing the volatility of loans and deposits and increasing efficiency. Others are concerned that foreign banks might choose to extend credit only to certain customers, leaving some sectors-such as small businesses-unserved. The authors examine this issue. Using bank-level data for Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Peru during the mid-1990s, they empirically investigate whether bank origin affects the share and growth rate of bank lending to small businesses. They find that although foreign banks generally lent less to small businesses (as share of total lending) than private domestic banks, the difference is due primarily to the behavior of small foreign banks. The difference was considerably smaller for large and medium-sized banks. And in Chile and Colombia, large foreign banks might actually lend slightly more (as share of total lending) than large domestic banks. -
Publication
Foreign Bank Entry : Experience, Implications for Developing Countries, and Agenda for Further Research
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2001-10)In recent years, foreign bank participation has increased tremendously in several developing countries. In Argentina, Chile, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, for example, more than fifty percent of banking assets are now in foreign-controlled banks. In Asia, Africa, The Middle East, and the former Soviet Union, the rate of entry by foreign banks has been slower, but the trend is similar. Although the number of countries welcoming foreign banks is growing, many questions about foreign bank entry are still being debated, including: 1) What draws foreign banks to a country? 2) Which banks expand abroad? 3) What do foreign banks do once they arrive? 4) How does the mode of a bank's entry - for example, as a branch of its parent, or as an independent subsidiary company - affect its behavior? The authors summarize current knowledge on these issues. In addition, since the existing literature focuses heavily on industrial countries, they put forth an agenda for further study of the effects of foreign bank entry in developing countries. -
Publication
Bringing Microfinance Services to the Poor : Crediamigo in Brazil
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2002-08)Among policymakers and economists, there is a widely held perception that microenterprises1 face severe financing shortages that limit their growth opportunities. Resolving the problems of access to finance as well as the high cost of financing has become the main objective of many government programs. With a view to increasing access to credit for microenterprises in the Northeast Region of Brazil, the World Bank has supported Banco do Nordeste's CrediAmigo microfinance program since 1997. This note describes how Banco do Nordeste initiated CrediAmigo as part of its restructuring strategy and how the program has expanded to become the largest microfinance provider in Brazil. To date, many lessons have emerged, both from CrediAmigo and the World Bank project that supports the program. Brazilian private banks and non-bank financial institutions offer a variety of credit products targeted to micro and small enterprises. These products typically carry very high interest rates and require collateral. Banking networks also leave many areas, particularly poor and remote regions in the Northeast and North of Brazil, underserved. About 57 percent of all municipalities in these regions have no access to a bank branch, compared to a national average of around 30 percent. Although in many other Latin American countries, microfinance institutions have been able to partially fill the gap left by larger institutions, in Brazil, only a small fraction of the potential demand for microfinance appears to be satisfied by the current supply. -
Publication
Costa Rica Five Years after CAFTA-DR: Assessing Early Results
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2015-06-05)For Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic-Central America-free trade agreement (CAFTA-DR) has been more than a trade agreement. Costa Rica has used trade liberalization and promotion of international trade as a core development strategy for decades. CAFTA-DR consolidated benefits that had previously been unilaterally extended under the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) into a multilateral FTA, providing a much more stable environment for trade relationships. Beyond just being a trade agreement, CAFTA-DR brought about the opening of state monopolies in telecommunications and insurance, which polarized the country. No other trade agreement has generated as much controversy as this one about the potential impacts on the economy. Following a referendum with a small margin in favor of the agreement, Costa Rica was the last member country to ratify CAFTA-DR in 2009. Given the controversy at the time, the current study takes stock of the early impacts of CAFTA-DR during the five years since its ratification, addresses the following questions: What actual changes did the agreement bring about and what was their context? What was the impact of those changes on trade and FDI flows? How have the high tech, insurance, telecommunications, and pharmaceutical sectors been impacted? -
Publication
Credit Constraints and Investment Behavior in Mexico’s Rural Economy
( 2009-08-01)This paper uses two recently completed surveys of individual entrepreneurs (farmers and microentrepreneurs) and registered enterprises (agricultural and nonagricultural) operating in Mexico s rural sector to provide new evidence about the factors influencing the incidence of credit constraints and investment behavior. To measure the incidence of credit constraints, the authors use self-reported information on whether economic agents have a demand for loans, separating formal and informal markets. They define credit constraints as a situation where rural agents report an unsatisfied demand for loans (formal or informal), which originates from rural agents having projects that are too risky or from impediments hindering the ability of rural agents and lenders to reduce information asymmetries. The authors find that the self-reported demand for loans is low. Nevertheless, the incidence of credit constraints is pervasive, especially among individual entrepreneurs. The low use of loans has consequences for the amount of investments that occur in the rural economy, posing a major obstacle to Mexico s convergence towards its NAFTA partners. The empirical analysis, which includes proxies of business prospects and creditworthiness, shows that improving the availability of loans to credit constrained agents would increase the number of agents making investments and their investment to capital ratios.