External Conditions on Growth in Latin America (Österholm and Zettelmeyer)

Álvaro Manoel (amanoel@imf.org) recommends: Pär Österholm and Jeromin Zettelmeyer, "The Effect of External Conditions on Growth in Latin America", IMFStaff Papers, vol.55, n.4, Dec./2008. The paper "finds that 50 to 60 percent of the variation in Latin American GDP growth is accounted for by external shocks. Conditional forecasts for a variety of external scenarios suggest that Latin American growth is robust to moderate declines in commodity prices and external growth, but sensitive to more extreme shocks, particularly a combined external slowdown and tightening of world financial conditions." Álvaro conclues: very interesting and timely, isn