NBER Publications by Herman Kamil

We provide evidence on the real effects of credit supply shocks. By utilizing a new firm-level database from six Latin American countries between 1990 to 2005 and using a differences-indifferences methodology, we empirically test whether bank credit supply shocks affect exporters’ investment holding their creditworthiness constant. We compare investment undertaken by domestic exporters to that of foreign-owned exporters, where the latter’s exposure to the liquidity shock in the domestic banking sector is lower. Conditional on changes in firms’ exposure to short term foreign currency debt, we find that foreign-owned exporters increase investment by 15 percentage points relative to domestic exporters in the aftermath of steep devaluations. This result only holds when the currency crisis occu...

This paper examines the surprising performance of the Argentine stock market in the midst of the country's most recent financial crisis and the role played by ADRs in Argentine capital flight. Although Argentine investors were subject to capital controls, they were able to purchase stocks with associated ADRs for pesos in Argentina, convert them into ADRs, re-sell them in New York for dollars and deposit the dollar proceeds in U.S. bank accounts. In the paper we show that: (1) ADR discounts went as high as 60% (indicating that Argentine investors were willing to pay significant amounts in order to legally move their funds abroad), (2) the market anticipated (correctly) a 40% devaluation, (3) local market factors in Argentina became more important in pricing peso denominated stocks with as...