The Interdependence between Credit and Real Business Cycles in Latin American Economies
La serie Borradores de Economía es una publicación de la Subgerencia de Estudios Económicos del Banco de la República. Los trabajos son de carácter provisional, las opiniones y posibles errores son responsabilidad exclusiva del autor y sus contenidos no comprometen al Banco de la República ni a su Junta Directiva.
In this document we estimate credit and GDP cycles for three Latin-American economies and study their relation in the time and frequency domains. Cycles are estimated in order to analyze their medium and short-term frequencies. We find that short-term cycles are usually more volatile than medium-term cycles for credit and GDP in Chile, Colombia and Peru. We also find that credit-cycle peaks in the middle 1990s and middle 2000s precede notable GDP recessions 2 or 3 years later in these countries. Additionally, credit cycles in Latin-American economies tend to cause later movements in economic activity. This effect can be decomposed into two components: first, a negative effect in the case of business-cycle frequencies, and a positive effect in the case of medium-term GDP fluctuations.
May 2013. Disclaimer: The findings, recommendations, interpretations and conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Banco de la República or its Board of Directors.
