Argentina Withdraws From ICSID

In a follow up to my previous post, Argentina has announced its intention to withdraw from ICSID. In this clip, government officials and commentators emphasize favoritism of firms over governments in ICSID rules. It bears mentioning that, according to ICSID case statistics, 48% of all cases ever referred to ICSID resulted in a monetary judgement in favor of investors. In 2012, 60% of all referred cases resulted in a similar monetary judgement. So, perhaps opinions on whether ICSID is biased toward investors depend in part on whether you look at levels vs. change. And, it bears repeating, Argentina has (probably) never paid an arbitral award.

HT Rob Galantucci

FDI Undeterred: Argentina's Messy Investment Climate

Argentina's investment policies certainly have been in the news recently. In this past Monday's (Dec 17) WTO Dispute Settlement Body's meeting, the US, EU, and Japan requested an establishment of a dispute panel against Argentina. Concurrently, Argentina sought to establish dispute panels against the EU (Spain in particular) and the US. Australia and Turkey lodged a formal complaint that Argentina was trying to use the DSB for inappropriate purposes. (See more here)

For more context, the Kirshner government wrested control of YPL from Spanish energy giant Repsol this past May. In the ensuing fall out, Repsol sued the Argentine government in a U.S. court, President Obama revoked Argentina's preferential trade privileges, and Repsol filed arbitration paperwork at ICSID earlier this month. No one is too confident that Repsol is going to recoup any of its $10 billion investment, especially since Argentina probably hasn't paid out a single arbitorial award. Spain is also threatening to sanction Argentina and Repsol has publically stated it will seek damages from any corporation that subsequently enters production and exploration agreements with YPL.

Standard political theories of foreign direct investment rest on a central insight from obsolescing bargaining (OBM) - FDI is limited by the political risk that firms face when they sink investment in a foreign jurisdiction, thus becoming "captive" to a potentially predatory state that faces incentives to promise contract sanctity ex ante and then renege on these promises ex post. From this perspective, no multinational should want to invest in Argentina - the risk of expropriation is just too high. Tools designed to mitigate the problems associated with time inconsistency of preferences just are not working in the Argentinian case (i.e. - Argentina is not compensating firms for contract breach, despite rulings against it). Yet, my weekly update from the Economist Intelligence Unit includes a discussion about how large oil multinationals are rushing to invest in Patagonia's shale deposits. Multiple oil giants are in contract negotiations with the Argentine government to undertake production sharing agreements with the newly nationalized YPL. And, they are doing this despite Repsol's threat to go after these private corporations for damages associated with nationalization.

So, what is the standard OBM missing? Of course, firms have to care about many things besides political risk. Economic factors are the primary drivers of investment decisions; political considerations are largely secondary. In this context, big countries with large domestic markets and with rich endowments of lucrative natural resources typically can get away with a lot of things small countries without energy reserves cannot. This economic/geographic argument underpins Rachel Wellhausen's recent post on the permissive environment for Argentina's nationalistic investment policies. And, understanding the economic factors that provide governments' more bargaining power vis-a-vie investors certainly explains much of the deviation away from what OBM-based theories predict.

But, I think there is something else we need to consider - how firm and investment characteristics modify OBM dynamics. Some of my current research considers how firms are heterogenous in both the amount of political risk they will accept and how they define political risk. What do I mean by this? First, firm characteristics matter for how risk acceptant they will be. Some of the most interesting current work on FDI focuses on explaining these systematic variations. Daniel Blake argues multinationals view their subsidiaries as a portfolio of potential revenue streams, and within this holistic management conception, MNEs might be willing to sustain losses in one location as part of a larger strategy of gaining market share. Ben Graham argues that firms can learn how to manage political risk, and that some firms are uniquely positioned to manage such risks and therefore may specialize in locating in high risk countries. Together, both of these arguments fit nicely with EIU’s assertion that large oil companies are willing to take large bets in Argentina’s shale fields despite threats of nationalization. Indeed, such threats may benefit large energy multinationals because small firms are less able to manage these risks, depressing acquisition prices. This is an important point because it indicates that certain multinational firms will actually benefit from nationalistic policies!

While a bit further afield from the Argentine case, I also argue firms vary in how exposed they are to the threat of government interference. Firms that enter countries through privatization of utilities and infrastructure as well as firms that engage in resource extraction on government land are more vulnerable to government interference than are manufacturing firms. Right now, I'm working on a project that shows that bilateral investment treaties (treaties specifically designed to overcome OBM problems) have differential effects on different modes of entry for FDI. The point here is that BITs may help attract FDI for privatization much more than FDI for private sector M&As or greenfield investment. Since there is some evidence that mode of entry matters for contributions to economic growth, this insight has important investment and development policy implications.

What Argentina Says About Greece

Greg Ip has a nice post at Free Exchange highlighting the similarities between Greece today and Argentina around the turn of the millenium. Well worth reading, as is my post from last October making many of the same points.

Lira Lessons from Argentina

The Economist's 'J.O.' on what it would mean to leave the euro:

Creating a new currency is not that difficult. A determined country could simply pass a law saying that all financial dealings should henceforth be conducted in the new lira (or drachma, or escudo, or whatever). Colleagues who have covered Argentina tell of how, in August 2001, the province of Buenos Aires issued $90m of IOUs to employees as part of their pay packets. These bills, known as patacones, were soon widely accepted in exchange for goods and services. McDonalds even offered a special “Patacombo” menu in exchange for a $5 denomination IOU. Argentina broke its "irrevocable" currency peg to the US dollar a few months later.

That's not how I read the history. How I read the history is that McDonalds was one of the only companies that would take patacones, and even then only if you had exact change. Other companies hoarded pesos (or USD) and moved them out of the country if they were able. Withdrawals of pesos from banks was strictly limited under corralito so patacones had some use, but there was a general shortage of goods and services in the economy so no currencies (besides the USD) could truly be said to be "widely accepted". As I read the history, the workers who suddenly found themselves paid in patacones surrounded government buildings in Buenos Aires in protest and demanded they be paid in pesos. The use of patacones, while perhaps the only option for a provincial government that couldn't pay its debts any other way, was a disaster and the currency was only in substantial use for a short time.

It's possible I've got my history wrong, and J.O. certainly is not arguing that issuing a new currency is painless. But I don't think it's quite as simple as (s)he says.

The Argentinian Euro Deal

Markets seemed to like it yesterday, not so much today. You can find news and discussion of the plan everywhere. I liked Salmon's takes here and here.

Like many others I'm skeptical that it will work. Interestingly enough I'm currently reading Paul Blustein's very good And the Money Kept Rolling In (and Out) about the IMF's relationship with Argentina around the turn of the millenium. The parallels between Argentina and Greece are striking -- I'm not the first to notice this -- but the parallels between the IMF and EU actions are also notable. Let's run down some of them.

1. At the time Argentina was on a convertibility system with the peso was pegged one-to-one to the US dollar. This is functionally very similar to the European common currency, where "Greek" euros are pegged one-to-one with "German" euros. Both systems were adopted for similar reasons: national authorities were not able to credibly commit to stable monetary policy, which led to a lot of economic volatility, investment risk, and concomitant slow growth. In both cases macroeconomic adjustment is impossible through the exchange rate, which leaves internal devaluation (i.e. austerity) and/or debt default as the only remaining options.

2. Both policies worked well for about a decade. Because of that, the Argentine and Greek governments were able to borrow at low interest rates. And because of that, governments were fairly casual about fiscal probity. While public deficits were not extreme, they were politically entrenched. When growth began to slow lower tax revenues led to a growing debt burden. Interest rate spreads widened as investors began to believe that both economies would not be able to grow fast enough to manage their debt. This, of course, can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Both governments were voted out of office, both new governments instituted fiscal reforms. In both cases these were insufficient to close the budget gap. In both cases the cost of incurring new debt, or of servicing old debt, became prohibitive.

3. In Argentina, the IMF began disbursing relatively small amounts of money in the hope that external financing would reassure bond markets. In other words, the IMF hoped that it was a liquidity crunch, not a solvency crisis. In that situation a tie-over loan can buy time for the economy to get some growth back. The EU did the same thing with the introduction of the EFSF. But the underlying economic numbers didn't improve, and bond markets continued to believe that issue was over solvency, not liquidity.

4. Politics intervenes. In Argentina, the US (and other key IMF members) were hesitant to offer additional financing as they had done during the Tequila Crisis. In particular, John Taylor -- then at the Treasury Department -- didn't want to throw US funds into the pot. Neither did Glenn Hubbard of the CEA or Paul O'Neill, the Treasury Secretary. In Europe, many members were reticent to commit more funds. In both cases policymakers tried to figure out how to leverage already-appropriated funds to have a greater effect, but nobody bought it in either case. (Ken Rogoff, at the IMF during the Argentina crisis, quipped "After one strips out all the window dressing, there is no way to make $6 billion of liquidity worth more than $6 billion in liquidity. But there are many creative ways to make it less.")

5. Then come the "voluntary" private sector haircuts, coupled with additional public funds. These are intended to do a few things: extend the timeframe that indebted countries have to consolidate fiscally, reestablish growth, force the private sector to bear some of the costs of bailouts, and thus prevent default in a politically palatable way. In both cases the initial market reaction was positive, but in Argentina the effect was short-lived and I expect that to be the case with Greece as well. Barry Eichengreen described the Argentina situation thus: "The realization had dawned that the IMF package offered no magic formula for getting growth going again. And without growth, it is hard to see how political support for paying the foreign debt can be sustained." This sounds a lot like Greece, no?

6. A corollary of the private sector haircuts, as well as extended financing from international institutions, is that the country actually becomes more indebted rather than less. This happens in two ways. The private sector demands some form of compensation in exchange for voluntarily altering the terms of their debt contracts; and the new financing from international institutions also tacks onto the principle. Additionally, it's more difficult to default on IMF/EFSF loans than private sector loans. Given that the optimistic scenario is that this deal will reduce Greece's debt load to 120% of GDP, and the fact that the fundamental problems -- low growth + high debt in a fixed-currency system -- have not been resolved, there is little reason to be optimistic about the outcome.

Ultimately Argentina's internal adjustment plans were undermined by domestic politics. Voters simply got sick of extreme austerity and revolted. That meant a debt default and the abandonment of the convertibility system. It's hard not to imagine a similar scenario playing out in Greece in the coming months.

Even if it doesn't, there's still Spain and Italy looming over the horizon.

Russian Government Advocates Punching Russian Policemen

No, seriously:

[H]ere’s one you don’t see very often: the Interior Minister of a country suggesting the people should literally hit back at the police. As reported in the Washington Post, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev stated:

May a citizen hit back at a policeman who has attacked him? Yes he may; if he is not a criminal, if he is walking along quietly and breaking no rules.

Moreover, the Power Vertical quotes a Russian MP, Andrei Makarov, as suggesting:

You can neither modernize nor reform the Interior Ministry. You can only abolish it. The whole police force needs to be decommissioned and cleansed with help from civil society and human rights groups.’

While such a comment might not be unexpected from an opposition deputy (to the extent that any even exist in Russia these days), what is particularly interesting is that Makarov is actually a fairly prominent member of Russia’s ruling party, United Russia.

I'd like to link to a particular N.W.A. song here, but instead here's a video of Argentinean legislators throwing chairs and punching each other (it starts at about the 1:30 mark).

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What Does a Correlation Really Tell Us?

Ed Glaeser wants to know why Argentina's economy hasn't performed better over the past 100 years, and prints this graph:




He interprets it thusly:

Schooling is measured by the share of the relevant populations that was enrolled in primary, secondary or tertiary schooling. Argentina [in 1990] may have been rich, but it was not that well-educated. In 2000, Argentina was doing about as well as would be expected based on its education levels in 1900. Long-run national success is built on human capital, both because of the link between schooling and technology and because of the link between education and well-functioning democracy.

I mentioned this to a fellow grad student (who is Argentinian) and she thought Glaeser was crazy. She argued that correlation doesn't equal causation, and it is certainly plausible that the causal direction runs the other way (i.e. the poor economic performance led to lower public revenues which then led to less investment in education). She also half-jokingly recommended that I re-read some dependency theory to understand why regions are clustered at the top and bottom of the above graph.

To me, either Glaeser or my classmate could be correct. They could just as well both be incorrect. There's been a lot of political instability in Argentina over last century, right? Perhaps that instability is driving both results. Any of these interpretations are plausible, and just looking at the above graph doesn't help us eliminate alternative hypotheses.

Of course, Glaeser could just respond by arguing that education is also highly correlated with well-functioning democracy, so maybe low education levels explain the political instability as well. But if that story doesn't ring true to my classmate, who is very smart and surely knows more about her country than Glaeser does, then I'd have to wonder. Besides, if political elites knew that their hold on power would be strengthened by limiting opportunities for education, then maybe they'd... limit opportunities for education.

What's the point? Well, there's several. One is that we can learn quite a lot by examining cross-sectional correlations. But another is that correlations alone won't take us all the way to understanding. And the third is that it's really really hard to figure out what's gone on in Argentina over the past 100 years.

Zimbabwe introduces new $50 billion note

From CNN.com:

Zimbabwe's central bank will introduce a $50 billion note -- enough to buy just two loaves of bread -- as a way of fighting cash shortages amid spiraling inflation.

The country's acting finance minister, Patrick Chinamasa, made the announcement in a government gazette released Saturday.

While Chinamasa did not give the date on which the $50 billion and new $20 billion notes would come into circulation, an official at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe said the notes would be distributed to all banks by the end of Monday.

Zimbabwe is grappling with hyperinflation, now officially estimated at 231 million percent and its currency is fast losing its value. As of Friday, one U.S. dollar was trading at around ZW$25 billion.

When the government issued a $10 billion note just three weeks ago, it bought 20 loaves of bread. That note now can purchase less than half of one loaf.

Realizing the worthlessness of the currency, the RBZ has allowed most goods and services to be charged in foreign currency. As a result, grocery purchases, government hospital bills, property sales, rent, vegetables and even mobile phone recharge cards are now paid for in foreign currency, as the worthless Zimbabwe dollar virtually ceases to be legal tender.

Under these circumstances, most, if not all, consumers would flock to hold and do business only in foreign currency. Their domestic currency can not hold its value, so these people would do best by refusing to hold any Zimbabwean currency and instead try to pay for goods and services using foreign currency (if they can get their hands on any of it) or turn to bartering.

This reminds me of hearing stories about Argentinean grocery stores in the 1990's. Shop owners stopped labeling the prices of grocery items on the shelves because by the time a customer would pick up the item and walk it to the counter to pay, the price would have gone up. Customers would walk in, literally, with a bag of money and try their best to grab the item and run to the counter before it went up in price. 

It is difficult to watch this situation develop in an extremely poor, African country. With more than 80% of the working age population unemployed, one of the lowest standards of living in Africa, a dysfunctional government and economic system and rampant hyperinflation, how can people survive? The vast majority of these people do not have access to foreign currency and can not find work to try to earn even the most modest of wages. This is where a modern economy spirals backwards into the realm of a 16th century barter economy. This is painful to watch. How can any of this be possible in the 21st century?