Person:
Herrera, Santiago

Middle East and North Africa
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Macroeconomics, Egypt, International Finance, Expenditure Efficiency Measurement and Benchmarking, Latin America
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Middle East and North Africa
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Last updated: February 1, 2023
Biography
Santiago Herrera Aguilera is the Lead Country Economist for Egypt in the Middle East and North Africa region at the World Bank. He has been in this position since September of 2008. He first joined the Bank in May of 1998 as a Senior Economist working for the Latin America and Caribbean Region. In February of 2004 he became the Lead Economist for economic policy at the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network in Washington. Prior to joining the Bank, Aguilera was the Deputy Minister of Finance in Columbia from 1995 to 1996. Before that, he was the Director of the National Budget also at the Columbian Ministry of Finance. Aguilera holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Economics from Columbia University in New York. He also holds a Masters degree in Economics from the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogota, Columbia.

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Author: Herrera, Santiago × Supported Language: en × Topic: Banks and Banking Reform ×

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Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Macroeconomic Shocks and Banking Sector Developments in Egypt
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-01) Youssef, Hoda; Herrera, Santiago
    From 2008 to 2011, Egypt was hit by significant shocks, both global and country-specific. This paper assesses the impact of the resulting macroeconomic instability on the banking sector, and examines its role as a shock absorber. The Central Bank of Egypt accommodated the shocks by supplying liquidity to the market. The paper verifies a change in the fiscal regime from one in which the primary fiscal balance was used an instrument to stabilize the public debt ratio to one in which the policy instrument stopped playing that role and affected investors' assessment of the risk of holding public debt. This pattern suggests that fiscal conditions influenced exchange rate and price expectations originating a fiscal dominance situation in which the Central Bank could not control inflation. Hence, the Central Bank lacked functional independence in spite of its de jure independence, which underscores the importance of strengthening institutions that facilitate policy coordination and allow policy to be more predictable. The government also funds itself through non-market mechanisms, in a typical financial repression scheme. The paper estimates the revenue from financial repression at about 2.5 percent of gross domestic product in 2011, which together with the revenues from seignoriage add up to close to 50 percent of the budgeted tax revenues, indicating the need for an in-depth review of the governance of the public banks and the funding of public sector activities. Finally, the paper estimates the impact of shocks to macroeconomic variables on loan portfolio quality and bank capital.
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    Policy Mix, Public Debt Management and Fiscal Rules : Lessons from the 2002 Brazilian Crisis
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-02) Herrera, Santiago
    Despite significant progress in economic reform throughout the 1990s, and an exemplary development of the policymaking framework in the second part of the decade, Brazil suffered a major public debt and currency crisis in 2002. Though the political origin of the uncertainty cannot be ignored, the author identifies other sources of uncertainty emanating from the policymaking framework: fiscal policy was not responsive to the shocks, public debt instruments were used with several objectives (to stabilize the currency and to lengthen maturity) and there was inadequate supervision of agents holding public debt. Most of the flaws have been fixed following the crisis: a) The primary fiscal balance has been increased, sending the signal that it is a flexible instrument that will be used to ensure commitment of the sovereign to honor its obligations. b) The central bank formally transferred to the Treasury the remaining debt-issuance functions, facilitating a more adequate balancing of different risks involved in debt management. c) Mutual funds' public debt holdings are better regulated, ensuring that end-investors have the proper information to assess the risk of the institutions in which they invest.
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    Why Don’t Banks Lend to Egypt’s Private Sector?
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-06) Hurlin, Christophe; Herrera, Santiago; Zaki, Chahir
    Bank credit to Egypt's private sector decreased over the last decade, despite a recapitalized banking system and high rates of economic growth. Recent macro-economic turmoil has reinforced the trend. This paper explains the decrease based on credit supply and demand considerations by 1) presenting stylized facts regarding the evolution of the banks' sources and fund use in 2005 to 2011, noting two different cycles of external capital flows, and 2) estimating private credit supply and demand equations using quarterly data from 1998 to 2011. The system of simultaneous equations is estimated both assuming continuous market clearing and allowing for transitory price rigidity entailing market disequilibrium. The main results are robust to the market clearing assumption. During the global financial crisis, a significant capital outflow stalled bank deposit growth, which in turn affected the private sector's credit supply. At the same time, the banking sector increased credit to the government. Both factors reduced the private sector's credit supply during the period under study. After the trough of the global crisis, capital flowed back into Egypt and deposit growth stopped being a drag on the supply side, but bank credit to the government continued to drive the decrease in the private sector's credit supply. Beginning in the final quarter of 2010, capital flows reversed in tandem with global capital markets, and in January 2011 the popular uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak added an Egypt-specific shock that accentuated the outflow. Lending capacity dragged again, accounting for 10 percent of the estimated fall in private credit. Credit to the government continued to drain resources, accounting for 70 - 80 percent of the estimated total decline. Reduced economic activity contributed around 15 percent of the total fall in credit. The relative importance of these factors contrasts with that of the preceding capital inflow period, when credit to the government accounted for 54 percent of the estimated fall, while demand factors accounted for a similar percentage.
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    The Quality of Fiscal Adjustment and the Long-Run Growth Impact of Fiscal Policy in Brazil
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2006-09) Blanco, Fernando; Herrera, Santiago
    The authors describe the main trends of Brazil's fiscal policy during the past decade and analyze (1) the ability to raise the primary surplus in response to external shocks, (2) the pro-cyclical nature of fiscal policy, and (3) the long-run impact of government expenditure composition and taxation. They analyze the use of the primary balance as a policy tool within the Drudi-Prati model, wherein the government uses the primary balance to reveal its commitment to service its debt. The authors verify that both the debt ratio and the primary balance are determinants of spreads and credit ratings in Brazil. But the relationship is nonlinear: the impact of the primary balance on spreads is amplified as the debt ratio increases. Using an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach, the authors analyze the relationship between the primary balance and economic activity, finding a positive correlation in the long run. However, in the short run fiscal expansions are associated with primary balance reductions and vice-versa during output contractions, confirming the procyclical nature of fiscal policy in the short run. The authors use two approaches, ARDL and a cointegrating value at risk (VAR), to analyze the interaction between public expenditure composition and taxation on growth. Similar results are obtained: large elasticities of output with respect to capital stocks, a significant negative impact of taxation on long-run GDP, and a negative impact of increasing government consumption and transfer payments on GDP. These results shed light on the contribution of fiscal policy to disappointing growth performance in Brazil during the past decade.